Isabel Walker
1928-Dec. 17, 2023
Palo Alto, California
Isabel Walker — Age 95, passed away peacefully in Palo Alto on December 17, 2023.
Isabel got her start in caring for others as a young girl. In 1938, when she was ten, her mother asked her to take her place on the Red Cross’s annual door-to-door canvass in her home town of Wilmington, Massachusetts. Thanks to a generous donation from a neighbor, she set a local record for collections, sparking a lifelong interest in nursing and later social work.
Isabel Ames MacLeod earned B.S. and R.N. degrees from Simmons College and attended Smith College’s School for Social Work. She supported disaster response efforts up and down the East Coast, ranging from mine explosions to floods and hurricanes, and later worked for the Kennedy family in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C, where she met her future husband John Walker. In the mid-1950s, Isabel became the Red Cross's Nursing Representative for the state of Ohio, establishing a nursing committee in every chapter in the state. She earned a Master's Degree in Social Work from the University of Indiana.
Isabel and John married in 1958. John was serving in the US Navy, and they soon moved to Taiwan. Isabel served with the American Red Cross Field Service in Taiwan and at Red Cross training centers in Japan and the Philippines.
In 1961 they moved to San Francisco, and then to Palo Alto three years later. In 1970, Isabel joined Stanford University Medical Center as a member of the counseling team and a support-group facilitator. For much of the next thirty years she served countless patients in many roles, including as Assistant Director of the Department of Social Services and as the Department of Oncology’s first Clinical Social Worker. She co-authored several works on supporting cancer patients and their families, and continued to see patients well into her 80s. She brought a practical empathy to all of her roles — helpful and kind to patients and families dealing with life-altering challenges.
Isabel was a dedicated correspondent with friends across the country and through the years, and was an active volunteer with the Palo Alto schools and local church groups. She loved beaches on both coasts, collecting artifacts and memories from her travels. She was a valued friend, colleague, and contributor to her community, as well as a beloved mother and grandmother.
She was predeceased by her sister Jean, her brother Duncan, and her husband John, and is survived by her son Kent and daughter-in-law Diana Walsh, daughter Avery and son-in-law Marc Olesen, and grandchildren Quinn, Callie, and Garrett Walker, and Jordan, Brooke, Kendall, and Tatum Olesen.
The family asks that any contributions in Isabel’s memory be made to the American Red Cross, where she got her start in public health nursing and which remained close to her heart throughout her life.
Services will be held at St. Mark’s Church, 600 Colorado Ave. Palo Alto, on January 13 at 10:30 am.
In a 2016 interview with the Red Cross, Isabel recalled "When my mother sent that 10-year-old girl out on that door-to-door drive, I was introduced to the fact that if you work hard and do something important, it really means something in life.” It did.
