Idealist changes course after 21 years

By LENNIE BENNETT

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 18, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- Jane Trocheck Walker, a mainstay at the St. Petersburg Free Clinic and its deputy executive director, announced her retirement Thursday at the agency's Hunger Banquet.

She has worked at the Free Clinic for 21 years, "almost my entire adult life," said Walker, 45. "It took me about a year to make this decision. It was time. Things are changing. I need to get back to grass roots."

In 1979 Walker, a native of St. Petersburg, had recently graduated from Florida State University with a degree in criminology and was working at a halfway house with juvenile offenders when she began volunteering at the Free Clinic.

"It was like divine intervention," she said. "Something just clicked."

Walker was hired in 1979 by the late Sister Margaret Freeman, the legendary nun who came to St. Petersburg in 1976 and built a small medical clinic into a multi-service agency by the time she retired in 1992. Sister Margaret died in 1996.

"Sister Margaret was my mentor," Walker said. "In the early years at the Free Clinic, we just did whatever had to be done ourselves. All the physical work. I remember collecting aluminum cans and flattening them with a sledgehammer so we could collect the money."

During her career at the Free Clinic, several programs, such as the Center Against Spouse Abuse and New Life Birthing Center, were formed and then spun off as independent agencies.

Like her mentor, Walker has been a vocal advocate on behalf of the homeless.

"Sometimes too vocal, maybe," she said, laughing.

Norm Dusseault, a board member and past president who has known Walker for 20 years, said in his tribute to her at the Hunger Banquet, "Jane Walker has taken the lead in forming coalitions, shaping programs, influencing officials on behalf of those in need."

"We have more homeless people now than when we had fewer shelters," she said. "Housing here has changed. We have a different type of working poor. Some of the ways people used to be able to get a few extra bucks -- the plasma centers, before AIDS -- we don't have them anymore."

Executive director Jane Egbert said, "Jane has always regarded her job as more than a job. Her heart and soul are committed to those who are struggling to do their best with few resources. It is our responsibility and our goal to continue the fine work that Jane and others such as Sister Margaret Freeman, Marcie Biddleman (executive director from 1992 to 1999), and many longtime board members have established."

The Free Clinic serves about 10,000 people each month through programs that include the Food Bank, which collects and distributes surplus food to 125 organizations in Pinellas County; We Help, an emergency food and financial assistance program; a medical clinic; emergency and transitional shelters for men and women; and Maggie's Closet, a thrift store.

Walker, who has been married for 11 years to businessman Fred Walker, said she will get another job, "how or where I don't know. Retirement sounds funny."

She said she will focus on two issues, world hunger and grandparents raising grandkids, "as a volunteer or professionally."

Jane Egbert does not know if Walker's position will be filled. "We need to study what our greatest needs are," she said.

Walker ends her career at the Free Clinic officially on Nov. 12, "after the Crop Walk (for world hunger). I want to get back into advocacy. I'm idealistic in a lot of ways. If you don't believe the right thing can happen, then it won't."

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