MUSIC MINISTRY WALT THEUS' STORY

SUBMITTED BY FREDNA LEE

Walter “Walt” Theus is a lifelong member of Eastminster Presbyterian Church, having been baptized as an infant in early 1954 in the old Brown Building located at the top of the hill. When Walt was four-years-old, his parents bought a piano for his older sister to take lessons. His parents were both musicians and quickly realized that peeling him off the piano bench was not going to be easy.

At a young age, he was picking out tunes and chords on his own. He started lessons with the late Dr. Dode Phillips a few months before he was five-years-old. In the first grade, he started lessons with Marjorie Maynard, a childhood friend of his mother's who had studied piano performance and pedagogy with Edwin Hughes. He studied with Mrs. Maynard through high school.

Walt competed successfully in local and state auditions and competitions. He began accompanying at a young age and accompanied and sang in the Dreher High School Chorus. Walt studied piano with Max Camp at the University of South Carolina and accompanied and sang in the USC Concert Choir. He majored in international studies and attended law school, receiving his law license from USC in 1979. After over 12 years of private practice with Boyd, Knowlton, Tate, and Finlay and Sinkler & Boyd, P.A., Walt joined the U.S. Department of Justice in 1992 as a regional specialist in business bankruptcy law.

The national office in Washington increasingly used Walt to help with some of the most complex cases throughout the country. Since 2005, Walt has served exclusively as the senior trial attorney in the Chapter 11 Group of the General Counsel’s Office in the Executive Office of U.S. Trustees, telecommuting to Washington from Columbia. Walt retired from the active practice of law, effective January 1, 2023. He has never quit playing the piano, and he has sung in the Eastminster Choir since 1978, which he says makes him “old.” He is looking forward to doing even more things with his music during retirement.