The year was 1941, and America was about to enter World War II. Like many young men of his time, James Walker chose to enlist rather than wait for the inevitable draft notice. Several years before, he had moved to Annapolis from North Carolina to take a job as a dishwasher in the kitchen at the Royal Restaurant on West Street, a popular eating establishment a half block away from the County Courthouse.

James was just settling into his new life when the rumblings of war began to surface. He joined the Army and began his training at Fort Meade.

Eventually, Walker was assigned to Fort Huachuca, Arizona. He was working in the kitchen one morning when he saw a cook about to serve the "Sunday morning special" - a breakfast of bologna covered in cold, congealed gravy. It was so unappealing that James suggested the cook warm the bologna in the oven and serve it with a pitcher of warm gravy. The revised side dish was a great hit, the soldiers eating every bit of it instead of shoving it to a corner of the plate.

The next thing James knew, he was called in front of the mess sergeant. He braced himself for a dressing down, but instead was promoted to take on cooking duties.

Walker rapidly made his mark and by the time the division was ready to go overseas, he was made mess sergeant in charge of the commissary for the Anti-tank Company of the 93rd infantry division, which was assigned to Guadalcanal.

"It was a little hot," Walker says, understating the fierce fighting at Guadalcanal, "but we made out." The company sustained blasting from the Japanese ships day and night. The Mess Tent had been set up on the back lines, which initially were shielded from the worst action.

But when the Japanese began shelling the back lines, everything had to be moved up front. Walker and his men ended up in a in a hole covered with a tent, cooking right alongside the interminable fighting. "You had to stay underground," he said, "especially at night. If you were caught walking around up top, it didn't matter who you were, you were dead."

In 1945 he was discharged and returned to Annapolis where he applied for a civil service job.

For an African-American in those days, that meant working as part of the labor force at the Naval Academy. "There I was again," James says, "washing pots."

Thomas Duvall, Walker's colleague in the kitchen at the Naval Academy, and veteran of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, explains that there were very limited opportunities for a black serviceman in Annapolis. "Annapolis had no factories and no civil service jobs except at the Academy." At the Naval Academy, the only jobs open to blacks were custodial positions such as landscaping, labor, kitchen work and a few slots at the power plant. "If you wanted government work," Duvall says, "that was it."

When the personnel office reviewed Walker's records, they quickly promoted him to first cook. But cooking at the Naval Academy proved to be a very different experience than for the Army. For one thing, there was Chop Suey. "Never had that in the Army," Walker says. "And the tomato soup," Walker said, as he recalled stirring the kitchen's 200-gallon pots.

The soup, like everything served at the Academy, demanded attention to detail. "Those pots were nothing to play with," Walker said, pointing out that if you miscalculated on ingredients you risked spoiling hundreds of gallons of food.

"That place was run like a ship," says Duvall. Walker and Duvall worked together in the Naval Academy Commissary from the 1940's to the 1970's in a facility that both of them describe as a world unto itself. "Everything was made from scratch," Duvall says, backing up Walker's descriptions of a massive, self-contained operation.

Up until the late 1970's , the Naval Academy Commissary had its own butcher shop, bakery and ice cream room. Milk and cream came from the Academy's own dairy in Gambrills. The staff took an active role in what the midshipmen ate - from the preparation of food to the planning of daily menu selections.

Everyone involved took pride in what they served. "We had meatloaf that would talk back at you," Walker says. He reminisces about the home-baked eclairs, hand-carved meats, fresh-baked breads and rolls. "The tutti-frutti ice cream was so good it gave me diabetes," he jokes. No wonder - the Academy produced 20,000 pounds of ice cream each week.

In this era of portion-controlled food and cost-efficiency, it's hard to imagine the scope of the Naval Academy food operations. On a typical day, the kitchen supplied 4,000 midshipmen with freshly made family-style meals. A recipe for grilled hamburgers from that time period called for 1,400 pounds of ground beef, 168 pounds of bread crumbs, 17 pounds of salt, 14 ounces of pepper, 56 pounds of liquid egg and 28 gallons of milk.

The kitchen operated three shifts per day with 140 workers per shift, not counting the personnel in the butcher shop, deep freeze and other support operations. In the late 1970's the government did a cost-efficiency study which ended the era of made-from-scratch meals at the academy and resulted in cutbacks in kitchen staffing.

Walker worked the early shift at the academy and continued working when he signed out at 1 p.m.

He was one of the first African-Americans in town to own a backhoe and took on freelance jobs for area companies.

He tilled the land on his farm on Bestgate Road. He spread the Lord's word on WANN radio on Sundays, playing guitar with his band "The Unknown Four." Later he played as a part of "The Bowman Specials," based out of The First Baptist Church on Washington Street in Annapolis, during the Rev. Leroy Bowman's tenure. Nothing stopped James Walker from doing what needed to be done.

Soon after leaving the Army, Walker went to the bank to get a loan. He was told "we're not giving loans to servicemen." While waiting to speak to the bank officer, he had been talking to another veteran, a white man, who was also there to apply for a loan. Out of curiosity, Walker waited outside the bank while the other man went in to speak with the loan officer. When the other veteran came out, Walker asked him, "how you'd make out?" "Great, he said, got the loan."

Undaunted, he built his home on Hicks Avenue in Parole the way he cooked at the Naval Academy -from scratch - using a shovel to dig out the foundation. When the county refused to run the sewer system lines from where they stopped up the street from his house, he bought pipes and was made plans to dig the lines and hook up to the system himself. (Luckily, a decision was made to continue running the lines down Hicks Avenue, before he began construction.)

After building his home, he bought a farm on Bestgate Road from money saved by thrift and hard work. There, he grew fruits and vegetables, including his famous silver queen corn.

On the evening of November 21, 1974, Walker got a call telling him his farm was on fire. It was one of four major fires that night, including one just down the road at the Unitarian Universalist Church. The fires made the headline of The Evening Capital, devastating the church building and destroying Walker's barn which housed three tractors, farm equipment and a new sawmill. Arson was suspected, and eventually, a neighbor's grandson was arrested. A few years after the fire, Walker sold the property. It is now the site of the Windgate condominiums on Bestgate Road.

At age ninety, James Walker still lives in his Parole home with Juanita, his wife of fifty-nine years. He works on his home, tends a garden and plays guitar as a member of the "Spirit Lifters," a popular area gospel group. From the hot sands of Guadalcanal to the kitchens of the Naval Academy to fanning the flames of faith, it could be said that James Walker knows how to handle the heat. But he simply says, "I'm just trying to help people." And isn't that what being a hero is all about?