A Dream Come True

Melveta Walker’s Library Career

By Todd Fuqua

By the time Melveta Walker (BAE 65) returned to ENMU to work in the Golden Library in 1988, she’d already had quite the career.

After graduating with a degree in history and a teaching license, the Eastern alum headed to Arizona to work on the Navajo Reservation as a librarian – the first full-time librarian the tribe ever had, according to Melveta.

It was – she thought – the culmination of her life’s ambition. It was an ambition that later turned into a 30-plus year career at ENMU as the director of the Golden Library, a career that closes after this spring semester.

Melveta Walker in the Runnels Gallery at the Golden Student Success Center.

Photo by Todd Fuqua

Born and raised in Portales, she planned to earn a library science degree, but at the time, the closest schools that had library science programs were in Denver and Dallas, and were both expensive private schools.

Melveta had then planned to attend the University of New Mexico and pursue a nursing degree, but her fiancé – later husband Jerry Walker (BS 64) – said he wouldn’t be able to visit her that much, since he still had to milk the cows on her father’s farm.

“So, I decided to go to ENMU to get an education degree, but I didn’t have any more scholarships, so I started working in the library,” Melveta said.

One semester into her college career, she browsed the class catalog, and found a number of library science courses.

“Boy was I excited. I ran to see Dr. (James) Dyke (the library director at the time) and asked him who was going to teach those classes,” she remembers. “He said, ‘probably no one.’ I said ‘but they’re in the catalog!’”

Melveta was told she needed at least eight people to make the class, so she walked all through the library and talked to everyone working there. By the time she completed her trek around the library, she had a list of 11 people who were ready to sign up for the library science courses.

Melveta and Jerry returned to Portales in Febrary 1998 after 25 years on the Navajo reservation. She said her return to ENMU was inevitable, or at least her husband thought so.

“Jerry said that it was God’s gift. ‘It’s what you’re meant to do,’” Melveta recalled Jerry telling her.

“When I worked on the reservation, we had a self-evaluation each year, asking what my ideal job would be. I always put, ‘being a librarian at Eastern New Mexico University.’”