Norman W. Walker - Biography

Biography

I can truthfully say that I am never conscious of my age. Since I reached maturity, I have never been aware of being any older, and I can say, without equivocation or mental reservation, that I feel more alive, alert, and full of enthusiasm today than I did when I was 30 years old. I still feel my best years are ahead of me. I never think of birthdays, nor do I celebrate them. Today I can truthfully say that I am enjoying vibrant health, I don't mind telling people how old I am: I AM AGELESS!"

Walker was born (1886) in Genoa, Liguria, Italy to Robert Walker, a Baptist Minister from Scotland, and Lydia Maw Walker. He was the second of the six children of Rev. and Mrs. Walker that lived to adulthood. As a young man, he discovered the value of vegetable juices while recovering from a breakdown in a peasant house in the French countryside. Watching the woman in the kitchen peel carrots, he noticed the moistness on the underside of the peel. He decided to try grinding them and had his first cup of carrot juice.

Walker followed his parents and siblings to the United States, leaving England in 1910 on the S.S. Lusitania, and arriving in New York City in October of that year, where Walker worked at various occupations (although he gave his occupation as "painter" in his immigration interview). Although Walker has never shown up in any publicly-released Federal Censuses, he and wife Margaret were enumerated in both the interim New York State Censuses of 1915 and 1925, where his birthplace was stated as "Italy" and occupations given for him as "janitor" and "real estate", respectively.

Norman W. Walker married Margaret Bruce Olcott, a New Yorker, on June 11, 1913. in New York City . Margaret Walker died in New York City in November 1970 (NY Times obituary and Social Security Death Index). It is not known when and where Norman and Margaret divorced, but the 18 Jan. 1943 issue of the Reno (NV) Evening Gazette reported a Marriage Application for Norman W. Walker of San Francisco and Helen Ruth Kerby of Carson City. There is no indication Walker had children from either marriage.

On November 22, 1918 Walker was granted U.S.citizenship by the New York State Court.

On May 6, 1933, The New York Times reported that "An indeterminate penitentiary term of not more than three years was imposed by Judge Allen in General Sessions yesterday on Norman Walker, 47 years old...." This was the fifth NY Times article in this matter, commencing in 1932. The original charges involved advertisements placed in the New York Times by Walker, as Managing Director for The Broughton Institute of Ortho-Dietetics in NY City, wherein he allegedly promised employment with this school following completion of a six-weeks course. Neither employment nor requested return of the $150 tuition followed. According to a Probation Officer testifying at the Walker trial, 30 graduated students lost a total of $3,500 (approximately $52,000 in 2011 dollars per CPI calculation). It is currently unknown how much incarceration time, if any, Walker actually served.

Later, Walker moved to Long Beach, California. With a medical doctor, he opened a juice bar and offered home delivery service. By 1930, they had devised dozens of fresh juice formulas for specific conditions. Walker believed colon cleansing with fresh juices was the key to good health. Walker designed his own juicer, the Norwalk, in two parts – a grinder to slowly grind the vegetables and a press to extract the juice. When the San Francisco health department banned unpasteurized vegetable juices such as Walker's, he began manufacturing his juice machine in Anaheim, California. He kept the plant going in spite of the steel shortage during World War II.

In the late 1940s, he moved to St. George, Utah, where he found an old cotton mill, ideal for his juice plant, but he was again hampered by local health department regulations. He sold his share of the factory to his business partner and started publication of his own health magazine, The New Health Movement Review. For several years, Walker ran a health ranch in Arizona. Eventually, he gave up the ranch to devote himself entirely to writing.

Walker observed a raw food diet, with fresh raw juices, until his death at the age of 99 years. Although claims have been made that he was both physically and mentally healthy and active up to the day of his death when he peacefully died during his sleep one night at his home in Cottonwood, Yavapai County, Arizona, no "official" evidence of such claims, such as an Arizona death certificate, have, so far, ever publicly surfaced.