Extolling the Simple Virtues of Strolling

Mary has been a Walker since birth, but she didn’t become a walker until about 25 years ago.

That’s when a transit strike transformed the 57-year-old commuter into a die-hard pedestrian, forcing her to end her workday with a 7 1/2-mile walk home along the Schuylkill River and into the city’s historic Germantown section.

Now 82, Mary Walker still holds a demanding full-time job and still unwinds by slipping into a pair of Woolworth’s sneakers and taking to the streets for her 2 1/2-hour scenic stroll home.

“It’s a little bit of a walk, but it’s so beautiful that I enjoy every minute of it,” she says. “I see people walking as fast as they can go, but that’s not how I do it. I get home when I get home.”

At any age, that kind of commute might be considered strenuous, if not crazy, especially in a society of automobile-enslaved individuals. At Mary’s age, the long haul is downright extraordinary.

But Mary Walker is no ordinary woman. She holds down a job at one of the nation’s largest banks with competence, diligence and vigor.

“Everybody’s amazed by her,” says her boss at CoreStates Corp., Philip J. Murray. “They’re amazed at what she can do, and when they hear her age they’re even more amazed. Everybody has an awful lot of respect for her.”

Mary spends more than 40 hours a week in a ninth-floor cubicle of a skyscraper in downtown Philadelphia, toiling over the estates of recently deceased people.

She has a selfless work ethic that traces back to her Depression-era upbringing, in which Mary and her brother were reared by a single, divorced mother with little money and no car.

She began working in the banking industry 63 years ago, after graduating from college with training in stenography and other business skills. Her first job at a local building and loan paid 25 cents an hour.

Then, in the 1940s, Mary began working for Germantown Trust. Through mergers and acquisitions, the bank came to be part of what is now CoreStates.

Facing compulsory retirement 12 years ago at age 70, Mary bowed out of the business world. But she was soon offered the choice to return as a temporary employee, free to work as much--or as little--as she wanted.

She initially chose four days a week, but she soon extended it to five, and now reports to work a half-hour early at 7:30 a.m. and leaves 15 minutes late at 5:15 p.m.

“I love it,” she says, her clear blue eyes glancing up momentarily from a shiny conference table. “I love the business world, and as my doctor said, ‘Keep on working. It keeps your mind stimulated.’ ”

As someone who grew up walking out of necessity and who played field hockey and tennis as a teenager at Germantown Friends School, Mary is also no stranger to athletics.

All year long, she hops on a train for a 20-minute ride into work. But from April to October she walks home, sizing up the weather on bad days and riding home only in a downpour.

The fear of being mugged is present, but not paralyzing. A victim of several street robberies near her home, Mary is well aware of crime, but she refuses to let that change the lifestyle she so cherishes.

“I’m aware of the way the world has changed; I’ve had a bag snatched three times,” she says. “But you can’t stop enjoying what you enjoy, and enjoying life because you’re afraid to go out.”

She refuses to lump herself into the class of runners, rowers, bikers and in-line skaters who traverse the same riverside paths she takes home. And she downplays the attention she gets for walking so far.

“Consider myself an athlete?” Mary asks. “Oh no. Not at the pace I set. Everyone else is miles ahead. That’s not the way I enjoy walking. I like to get home feeling better than I started, full of fresh air.”

Mary has no children and was never married, pointing out that she’s “not domestic.”

“The men I would have married didn’t want me. And the ones who wanted to marry me, I couldn’t stand,” she says.