A Century-Old Promise That’s Changing Lives Today

The Enduring Gift of Walters Collegiate Institute

From 1901 to 1906, Walters Collegiate Institute served the Richmond area as a bridge between Central University and the establishment of Eastern Kentucky State Normal School on the same location.

Many might be surprised to know that the Walters name and legacy lives on more than a century later, thanks to a scholarship fund for Madison Countians. A fund was first established in 1922 from proceeds from the sale of a final piece of land on what is now the campus of Eastern Kentucky University. For 102 years, per the Articles of Incorporation, monies were distributed to Madison County students in the form of no-interest loans. Recently, $407,821.22 was transferred to the EKU Foundation, and now the Walters Collegiate Institute Scholarship Fund will be tapped to award scholarships to students graduating from high schools in Madison County.

Walters Collegiate Institute (WCI) was founded by a group of Madison County leaders and named for Singleton P. Walters, a major benefactor of Central University, established in 1874, and the namesake of a residence hall on the EKU campus since 1967. Central merged with Centre College in 1901, relocating to the latter’s campus in Danville.

During its five years in Richmond, at a time public education was in its infancy, WCI offered a classical college preparatory education to young men from primarily Madison County. The teachers generally had graduated from elite universities such as Yale, Princeton and Johns Hopkins, and the rigorous curriculum featured classes in Latin, Greek, history, physiology, mathematics and English.

The Walters campus included the University Building, Miller Gymnasium and Memorial Hall, among other structures. Attendance at WCI ranged from 60 to 75 students each year. According to an article by local historian and former Eastern faculty member Fred Allen Engle, prominent Madison Countians who attended the school included Tim Baldwin Jr., Paul Burnam, Joe Prewitt Chenault, Arnold Hanger, Harry Hanger, Julian Million, John M. Park, Karl Park, Robert E. Turley Jr. and William L. Wallace.

Tuition was $60 per year and some students boarded on campus, while others arrived via horse or mule. Many Walters graduates went on to attend the nation’s best colleges.

But it wasn’t all work and no play. Perhaps as a harbinger of national prominence that its successor, Eastern, enjoyed years later, Walters lost only one football game during its five years.

Walters ceased operations once the Normal School acquired most of its property (23 ½ acres) in 1906, and the newly minted Model School took over many of WCI’s functions. When the Institute’s remaining 7 ½ acres were sold to Eastern in 1922, new trustees were added and the $10,000 from the sale went toward an endowment to fund the no-interest loans.

According to the book “Walters Collegiate Institute and the Founding of Eastern” by Richard A. Edwards, the 1926 board consisted of Tom H. Collins, president; Quinn Taylor, secretary; W. Neale Bennett; Tom Chenault; Joe H. Oldham; J.B. Walker; and his son, Dan B. Walker. By 1964, Dan B. Walker was the only surviving board member. Walker, presumably with help from unknown board members, oversaw the fund from 1922 to 1981. For many years, Walker’s son, James Wade Walker, served the fund as its CPA.

In 1981, Dan B. Walker’s grandson, retired Richmond businessman Frank Brown, a 1973 EKU graduate, took over managing the fund. He continued to work with James Wade Walker until 1987, when Richmond attorney David Smith and Richmond CPA G. Alan Long, a 1979 EKU graduate, joined the board. Brown estimates that since 1981, the board distributed approximately 60 no-interest loans totaling approximately $145,000 in value. Many students were helped with no-interest loans prior to 1981; however, in 1926 records were destroyed in a house fire and records prior to 1981 are unreliable, Brown said, so the total number of student loans and their total value is unknown.

Brown and Long managed the fund from 1987 to 2023, when the board, with assistance from Richmond attorney Michael Fore, a Walters loan recipient, decided the fund balance was sufficient to support a scholarship and the balance was entrusted to the EKU Foundation to establish a scholarship for Madison County students. Donations may be designated to the Walters fund.

For Brown, the history of the fund has been a matter of family honor. For more than a century, the Walters Collegiate Institute Fund was entrusted to his family—J.B. Walker, Dan B. Walker, James Wade Walker and Frank Brown.

Brown said he was “pleased that our family has honored Singleton P. Walters’ legacy and that the original $10,000 endowment can continue to serve Madison County students for many years to come.”