Bahá’í World/Volume 20/Zlmarian Stoakley Walker
ZLMARIAN STOAKLEY WALKER
1944—1989
DEEPLY SADDENED PASSING SELFLESS RADIANT PROMOTER CAUSE GOD ZLMARIAN WALKER. HER DEVOTED LONGTIME PIONEER SERVICES BRAZIL UNFORGETTABLE. HEARTFELT CONDOLENCES OFFERED YOUR COMMUNITY THIS LAMENTABLE LOSS. KINDLY EXTEND LOVING SYMPATHY HER FAMILY. ASSURE FERVENT PRAYERS HOLY THRESHOLD PROGRESS HER SOUL KINGDOM ON HIGH.
Peace education has always been implicit in the Bahá’í Cause, but the peace education movement in Brazil and elsewhere owes much to the efforts of Dr. Zlmarian Walker. In the 1980s, when the concept was still new in Europe and practically unknown in Brazil, she grasped its potential for direct and indirect teaching.
The Escola das Nações, the international school of Brasilia where she taught, provided an ideal setting for introducing and developing the idea of peace education, together with that of cooperative learning. With students of many different nationalities, races, and religions, it served as a kind of laboratory. However, to have an impact on the
Zlmarian Walker
nation, it would be necessary to introduce the idea into the public schools. There proved to be tremendous receptivity in schools throughout the land, as well as in other countries of Africa and Latin America, where Zlmarian made numerous presentations under the auspices of National and Local Spiritual Assemblies. Even wider audiences were reached through peace conferences and exhibitions. It would often happen that after a number of rather “dry” academic presentations, the warmth and enthusiasm of Zlmarian’s talks would captivate conference participants. Her genuineness of character, as well as her public speaking skills, enabled her to break through racial barriers and appeal directly to the heart.
Zlmarian was born on 15 April 1944 in Washington D.C. She had fond recollections of the dedication of the House of Worship in Wilmette in 1953, to which she was taken by her family, who were Bahá’ís.
When she was 12, Zlmarian pioneered with her family from Batavia, Illinois, to Mississipi. This courageous initiative, involving an unheard—of migration of northern
blacks to the heart of the Deep South, won the profound admiration of the friends gathered at the National Convention that year.
In 1967, Zlmarian was married to Robert K. Walker in a beautiful ceremony in the garden of the House of Worship, uniting the extended families of both races. They were to be blessed with two daughters: Shanta Navváb, born 1970; and Leili Leonora, born 1976.
In 1973, Zlmarian and Robert received their Doctor of Education degrees at the University of Massachusetts, where they participated in the development of the Anisa Model of education, under the direction of the late Dr. Daniel Jordan. Zlmarian became an assistant professor at Texas Southern University in Houston, and vice-director of the Multicultural Teacher Corps Program, where she was able to develop principles of multicultural education. These she carried to her pioneering post in Brazil, where she moved with her family in 1974.
As a Latin American Teaching Fellow at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, and subsequently as a visiting professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, she was able to combine graduate teaching and research with Bahá’í and family activities. She also lived in Vitória for two years before joining the Escola das Nações in 1981. She served as a member of the National Spiritual Assembly from 1985 until her passing.
Dr. Walker’s booklet, “World Peace through World Education”, was published in Portuguese in 1986 by the Brazilian Bahá’í Studies Association. An interview with her on the topic was published in the volume, Perspectives on Peace Education (Ake Bjerstedt, ed.), published in 1990 by the Malmö School of Education in Sweden. At the time of her death, which occurred 9 July 1989, she was working on a handbook in Portuguese on peace education. This manual was completed by Josephine Kuntz, Jeannine Sacco and Fabienne Lopez, of the Escola das Nações. The continuing efforts in the
field of peace education by the National Spiritual Assembly and Bahá’í communities all over Brazil are another part of her legacy.
The first year of the pilot teaching project in Guyana, launched in 1989 under the auspices of the Bahá’í World Centre, was dedicated to the memory of Zlmarian Walker and a Guyanese Bahá’í, Kenneth Brisport. An old friend who came to visit the project brought two pictures of Zlmarian wearing a sari at Green Acre Bahá’í School, in 1968. The photographs, one of which shows her with her head bowed and another with it lifted, inspired her daughter, Shanta, a participant in the project, to write the following:
Sitting
- The field so vast,
- The green so fresh,
- A queen,
- Examining every flower in her garden,
- The sari wrapped around her body,
- Like the sky involves the birds.
- And now you lift your head.
- I see you smile.
- Are you singing?
- Or does the music come from your stance?
- Is the sun really so bright,
- Or is your face of ebony lighting the day?
- The flowers are so bright, so fresh, so full of life,
- Like your laughter.
- I feel I could almost touch them.
- Oh, was it really just yesterday,
- Mother?
O Lord, glorify his station, shelter him under the pavilion of Thy supreme mercy, cause him to enter Thy glorious paradise, and perpetuate his existence in Thine exalted rose garden, that he may plunge into the sea of light in the world of mysteries.1
1 Selections from the Writings of 'Abdu’l-Bahá (Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 1982), p 197.