Walker becomes swimmer, and it lands him a whopper

Howard Manly

As fish stories go, this is a pretty good one. It even has photographs to prove what usually is dismissed as mere hearsay.

It starts with the honorable Chuck Walker, the newly appointed executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Walker received an invitation from Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree to go fishing off Martha’s Vineyard. The chartered boat was scheduled to leave the Vineyard at noon, which meant that Walker had to take the 10:30 a.m. ferry from Wood’s Hole.

For whatever reason, Walker missed the boat. Walker says he was caught in traffic. Others whisper that lateness is no stranger to Walker. Either way, Walker was forced to wait until noon before the next ferry.

As Walker tells the story, missing the charter was no excuse to Ogletree and his fishing party. They wanted Walker to meet them near Philbin Beach in Aquinnah, where the chartered boat could probably pick him up without much trouble.

Now this is where it gets a little tricky. At some point during these cell phone conversations, the manhood issue came up.

As Walker recalls, he was on the island, eating an ice cream cone with Rev. Ray Hammond in Oak Bluffs, when he decided to take the bait. “They kept telling me that the fishing was so good that the fish were jumping into the boat,” Walker said. “They made it sound like they were all Jonahs and there was nothing but whales around the boat.”

Walker has never been one to back down. He caught a ride to Philbin Beach, and this is where all the trouble began. There was no dock and the closest the chartered boat could come to shore was at least 150 yards.

Walker also had an additional problem. He was carrying his cell phone and a camera and there was no secure place to leave it. There was a parking lot attendant, but he told Walker that he was leaving soon.

This is when the panic started. “I thought they could send a little row boat or something to get me,” Walker said. “But they kept signaling to me to start swimming. We couldn’t hear each other but you could see that were moving their arms as if they were swimming and that is what they wanted me to do. To be honest, I thought they were joking.”

They weren’t. Sure enough, Walker peeled down, left his belongings on the beach and began the journey. “Waves were slapping me in the face and all they could do was laugh,” Walker said. “It took them a while before they threw out the life preserver.”

To makes matters worse, Ogletree and his fishing party, which included Dr. Ken Edelin and Caroline Hunter, took pictures and videotaped Walker in the water, swimming in his jeans.

Walker had the last laugh. Within ten minutes, he caught a 43-pound striped bass. “There may be millions of fish in the sea,” Walker boasted, “but that one got caught.”

Even Ogletree was impressed. “I guess the moral of the story is don’t miss the ferry,” Ogletree said. “But the other moral here is that when it comes to Chuck Walker, neither hell or high freezing water will keep him from meeting an obligation. Walker is clearly an iron man.”

Not only did he catch the largest fish of the day, Walker was dropped off at the same spot near Philbin Beach and swam back to shore. Once there, he found his belongings, just as he left them.