Jumping In With Both Feet

The eyes narrow, as if considering a twisting blue highway, when William Croker talks about his life’s obsession--the art of shifting his weight and placing one size-11 foot in front of the other, the act that has twice moved him to span the United States.

Walking.

To presidents, governors and state legislators, country singers, corporate big shots and personal secretaries, he’s known as Walkin’ Willie Croker, the down-to-earth Downey gas station attendant who has devoted more than 20 years of his life to walking the country to alert people to the importance of cancer checkups.

Wiry frame, dirty sneakers and all, Walkin’ Willie walks the walk. And even though he’s missing his front teeth, the 49-year-old can also talk the talk. And how.

Tipping his baseball cap to one side, he talks about losing father, mother and sister to cancer in the 1970s--deaths, he said, that could have been prevented through early detection. He talks about cancer awareness months he’s inspired across the country. And about the people who have saved their own lives with a trip to the doctor, moved to action by press reports of Croker and his one-man, roadside anti-cancer mission.

Like the St. Louis woman who heard about Croker’s walk and decided to get a checkup. While doctors found traces of cancer, the detection was early enough that the woman didn’t lose a breast. Said Croker: “I remember how much she was crying when she met us.”

In his own words, Croker is one crusader who doesn’t want your donation. “Take your money and kindly use it to provide a new mammogram machine in your own neighborhood,” he’ll say. He accepts only what he needs to sustain him on the road. What Croker wants is just a few moments of your time, to take an hour or two off from that hectic career, busy social life and houseful of demanding kids to finally do something for yourself: Go get a cancer checkup. Do it now.

The message is getting through. For his first cross-country walk in 1987, Croker had no sponsors and only $80 to start with. He ate bologna sandwiches and slept in bug-infested campgrounds.

That changed the second time around. In 1989, he had a number of sponsors, including free hotel rooms from the Ramada Corp. and 114 pairs of shoes and socks from Nike. He raised $10,000 during a rally the day the walk began, including a sizable donation from former baseball star Reggie Jackson.

Now, Croker has struck a new way to get attention: He’s planning a spring 1997 trek along the Great Wall of China to raise cancer consciousness worldwide.

To get ready for the trip, he is walking. And talking.

Because what really makes Croker tick is talking about the pure beauty and adventure of the open road, seeing the country coast to coast, step by step, like the pioneers before him. Only this time doing it with a Walkman, walking along at 7 mph to the bluesy rhythm of his Elvis Presley and Waylon Jennings cassettes.

The man who claims to have walked 75,000 miles in his lifetime talks about trudging through 2 feet of Texas snow in 30-degree-below-zero cold, about having his feet so blistered during a Death Valley trek that blood poured from his shoes each time he took them off.

He describes being pummeled with hail, dodging lightning strikes, being devoured alive by chiggers, mosquitoes and flies. He talks about losing 36 pounds during one 66-day, 2,762-mile cross-country ordeal, about the kindness and compassion of the long-distance truckers who protected him along the way.

And he talks about the gut-gripping determination it takes to cross the country twice in two years on foot, to scale the Rocky Mountains, looking up, spitting in his hand and going over those white-capped peaks--then giddily scanning the horizon for the next range, saying to himself, “Give me some more of ‘em.”

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When President Bush met Croker in the Oval Office after his second nationwide trek in 1989, he extended his hand and said, “Here comes Walkin’ Willie!”

Croker likes telling that story the most, how a $5-an-hour blue-collar Joe with a second-grade education got to meet his hero just by doing something he loves.

“I mean, look at me, I ain’t no hero,” he said, his weathered face punctuated with a smile. “I’m just a gas station attendant. And there’s me, walking among all these dignitaries and big shots at the White House who are all whispering, ‘How did he get in here?’ It was some moment, brother, let me tell you.”

But that was seven years ago. Now Croker is busy preparing for his newest adventure. Beginning in March, he plans to walk the length of the Great Wall--1,500 miles--in three months, from the moon-scaped Gobi Desert to the populated heart of Tian An Men Square in Beijing, not to defeat the wall, but to honor it.

Once in China, Croker hopes to sit down face to face with top Chinese officials and talk, not about politics, but about people, to spread his word about cancer prevention to the world’s most populous nation.

With the power of his own two feet and stubborn spirit, Croker wants to convince China and the United States to put aside the political sparring gloves and join forces to fight the spread of cancer and other diseases.

Croker declines to reveal the details of arranging his one-of-a-kind adventure, other than to say that the Chinese government has welcomed him after the intervention of some well-placed political allies in Washington, among them Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). National Geographic magazine is considering whether to chronicle the trip.

Pamela Slutz, acting director of the U.S. State Department’s office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs in Washington, said she received a letter from Croker this past summer and has responded in kind, encouraging the trip.

“I think it’s got good possibilities,” she said of the walk. “I don’t think any areas of the wall are politically sensitive, but some may be dangerous. I would think the Chinese would be rather open to his idea, considering the purpose.”

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Meanwhile, Croker is consulting tour books and guides. He’s reading histories of the wall and is even studying Mandarin. The gas station attendant is pumped for this trip, which he expects to be his biggest challenge yet.

“The Rockies were tough,” he said. “But this wall is just magnificent.” Then he crouches low with hands outstretched. “To make it up those steep steps, I’m going to have to walk monkey-style, just like a little animal.”

In the past, Croker has inspired the stuff of modern legend, including a song written about him by Larry Gatlin of the Gatlin Brothers that starts out: “Walkin’ Willie, he’s a hell of a man, he’s gonna show the world where we stand.”

Now he will be getting even more help to spread the word about cancer prevention.

On Saturday, a new film titled “William Croker: A Man and His Dream” will be premiered for invited guests in Seal Beach to help raise the estimated $25,000 to $35,000 needed for the trek.

Croker, who helped produce the film project, drawing from home videos as well as hundreds of television news segments and newspaper clips of his journeys, hopes the film will receive wide distribution as an educational film for children and adults.

Jean Dowd, an independent filmmaker who spearheaded the project after meeting Croker at the gas station, said the Great Wall walk will be chronicled on the World Wide Web through the Global Schoolhouse. Dowd has helped supply Croker with computer equipment so American children can talk with Croker during his walk and with other children in China.

In addition, she said, a U.S. insurance company with offices in Beijing has offered to sponsor Croker while he is in China and pledged a substantial donation to help cover the costs.

Said Dowd: “I liken Willie to those old-style American heroes, the people who built our country--ordinary, hard-working, decent people who had a dream and the determination to see it through. You used to find heroes all the time. But now they’re a rare breed. Like Willie.”

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As he looks for corporate sponsors, Croker has started to train for China. Having never owned a car, he rides his bicycle 12 miles each way to work and plans a few Rocky Mountain treks in the fall and spring to get his legs into shape.

And to the people like the woman who recently confronted him at the pumps, the one who--just because she hadn’t read about any recent walks--thought he was dead and “swore she went to my funeral,” Croker would like to say that he’s back, just like always, taking it one step at a time.

And to those kids back in grade school in Long Beach, the ones who taunted the young boy handicapped by a thyroid deficiency, chanting, “There’s goes the cripple!” well, Croker would like to see them keep pace with him now.

They’d soon become believers. Like the 200-pound man in the chicken suit who, during Croker’s 1989 cross-country jaunt, insisted on walking with him for 2 miles one hot August day in New Mexico as a publicity stunt.

“Well, most people don’t realize how fast I walk,” Croker said. “We hadn’t gone a half-mile when I turned around to see that the chicken was gone.

“He’d passed out.”