Virgil O. Walkling

November 21, 1909 – July 11, 1971

Virgil Walkling, 51, of Sonora, California, was pronounced dead on arrival in a local hospital on July 11, 1971.

Born in Oklahoma on November 21, 1909, he was the son of Orlando and Laverna Belle Greathouse Walkling. While attending Perry high school he was also active in the Perry Order of DeMolay and in the Boy Scouts, serving as assistant scribe. During his junior year at PHS, he and two other students spent several months “of roaming in foreign parts.” Virgil worked in Texas and returned to finish his junior year. In his senior year he was one of 14 members of the high school student body holding a place in the local unit of the national guard. He graduated in 1928.

In April 1929, he enrolled as a student in Harold Kindred’s flying school at Enid.

Virgil and Dorothy Maude Roads of Morrison were married at Medford, Oklahoma, on January 24, 1932. The couple moved to Seneca, Kansas, where he worked as a store manager. While living there the couple was blessed with the birth of a baby boy. After their stay Seneca the family moved to Herrington, Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri, and Elgin, North Dakota, before moving back to Perry, where he worked as manager and butcher of his father’s grocery, Walkling’s grocery.

While still a member of the National Guard, Battery C 158th Field Artillery Unit, he enlisted in the Army. In December, 1941, he was called into active service in World War II and he was sent to the army air force glider school. During his time in the service Virgil and Dorothy divorced. In 1943 he started training in giant cargo and troop-carrying gliders.

Following his military discharge, he and Pearl Davis were married in Carson City, Nevada, on Feb. 25, 1947. To this union two daughters were born. They lived in California where Virgil used his skills as a veteran pilot to work as a pilot for the Turlock Mosquito Abatement District, as a crop duster, and a mail carrier. He lived in California for 25 years.

Survivors include: two daughters, Rosemary Walkling of Sonora and Sandra Showalter of Modesto; and two sons, Gary Walkling of England and Norman Davis of Detroit.

Services will be held in the Heuton Memorial Chapel at 10 a.m. tomorrow. Burial will be in the Modesto Pioneer Cemetery, Stanislaus County, California.