A public visitation for Barbara Gavin Walker will be Friday, September 25, 2020, from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. at Riverwood Funeral Home in Brookhaven, Mississippi.
A private funeral mass (due to social distancing restrictions) will be held Saturday, September 26, 2020, at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Brookhaven, Mississippi, with burial at St Francis Catholic Cemetery. Riverwood Funeral Home in Brookhaven, MS is in charge of arrangements.

Mrs. Walker, 77, passed away Saturday, August 22, 2020, surrounded by family and friends at her home in Frisco, TX. She was born May 25, 1943, in Columbia, Tennessee, to Dr. William M. Gavin II and Mary Lucia Hutchinson Gavin. She graduated from St. Agnes Academy for girls in 1961, Siena College in 1963, and St. Joseph’s School of Nursing in 1965. In 1965 she married her high school sweetheart, Louis N. Walker, Jr. Married for 53 years, they made Brookhaven their home in 1975 and resided in the area for over 40 years.

Barbara loved Brookhaven and its community dearly. She worked as a dialysis nurse for more than 40 decades. At the end of her career in 2008, she was an Area Regional Manager for multiple dialysis clinics in Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. Barbara received numerous awards over her time as a nurse, including the Kidney Care Award for nursing. She served on many national committees for dialysis. She was also one of the first two nurses in Memphis to be trained on the artificial kidney machine and was in attendance for the first kidney transplant in the late 1960s.

Preceding her in death were parents; her brother, Bill Gavin AOCM, USN, Ret., her sister Mary Lucia “Patsy” Barnes, and her husband Louis N. Walker Jr.

She is survived by daughter Robin Walker, of Frisco, TX; daughter Peggy Walker Rushing and husband Will, of Frisco, TX; brother Joseph Gavin and wife Nancy, of North Ridgeville, OH; sister-in-law Jane Gavin, of Honolulu, HI; sister-in-law Patricia Taylor and husband Larry, of Parsons, TN; sister-in-law Cheri Hess Brooks and husband Eugene of Brookhaven; two grandchildren, Ellie and Gavin Rushing, of Frisco, TX; and 11 nieces and nephews.