Joel died in January, 1972 along with Dan Faulk (see many comments under his name).
Kirk Myers says this happened in January 1972. Here is how it was reported in a local newspaper:
Two College Students Asphyxiated
Two Ambassador College students died from suffocation or poisonous fumes from charcoal they burned to keep warm while sleeping in their car in Henryetta, Okla.
Police said Richard Joel Walker, 19, of Decatur, Ga., and Danny Franklin Faulk, 22, of Winter Garden, Fla., were found Monday by a gas station attendant.
The two juniors were returning to the Pasadena college following vacation at home during the semester break. They will be buried in their home towns.
It was only one brief year that I spent in Pasadena at AC in 1969-'70, but I'm glad to say that Joel became one of my friends while there, even though we were not in the same dorm (I was third floor Grove Terrace, and he was, if memory serves, located in the 360 men's dorm that year), nor even the same classes that I recall.
Somehow we met, and he being a southern gentleman from Georgia, and I a more northerly southerner from Missouri, but raised mostly in Oklahoma City, it was a mutual friendship and congenial relationship; one I have always cherished and will never forget.
Here are a couple of my caricature sketches of Joel made that year. He was an amiable enough model willing to pose for my still-budding artistic attempts:
Although I didn't know Joel that long, news of his death that cold January in 1972 came as quite a shock for me (I was then in my second year at the University of Missouri in Kansas City). Not long afterward I made the gut-wrenching decision to leave college and strike out on my own, moving away from home to Denver, where I started my first business as a graphic and commercial artist.
Perhaps it was learning about the shocking death of my former good friend Joel that had something to do with that. A few years later, in 1973, my brother Terry and I had a similar experience driving from Denver to Pasadena, trying to sleep one bitter cold night on the side of the road approaching Albuquerque NM from the north. (Who, other that someone used to living in the desert, could have known it gets so cold at night in that otherwise very warm clime?)
Had I remained at AC another two years, I now realize, the way our friendship began (although Joel was nearly two years younger than I, being the youngest to enter AC at that time, at age 16), I might have joined and been with him on that fatal trip, and as a result never lived to marry and have many children and grandchildren now.
Or perhaps that might have changed something in the heavenly scheme of things, and both Joel and Dan Faulk (who died with him, but whom I never knew while a student at AC) might still be alive and kickin' today. Or not, I suppose.
In any case, Joel has been dearly missed all these years, and I'm still as saddened by his sudden and rather ignominious passing, as I was that bitter day in January '72 when I first learned of his death.
Anne seems to recall hearing Joel give a sermonette, about spiritual icebergs, in Ft. Worth, on October 2, 1971 (six years to the day before she and I first met in Pasadena, at her Terrace Villa dorm). She remembers writing down his name for this AC student sent out on a pre-ministerial program during Worldwide's feast time, but says she also might be mistaken about who it was.
She was still in High School at the time, but Joel's speech (if that was him) might have had something to do with her attending AC finally, at first in Big Sandy, then Pasadena for her senior year. If so, Joel was perhaps posthumously partly responsible for our meeting, and marrying in '78, and for all the children and grandchildren we have had since.
If so, I'll certainly look forward to getting reacquainted with and thanking him some day, after the resurrection!
In any case, I still miss Joel and send my condolences to all who knew or were related to him, who also still mourn his untimely passing from this "veil of tears" we call life in this carnal age.
John Meeker (1969)
Joel died in January, 1972 along with Dan Faulk (see many comments under his name).
Kirk Myers says this happened in January 1972. Here is how it was reported in a local newspaper:
Richard Houghton (Scott) (1969)
It was only one brief year that I spent in Pasadena at AC in 1969-'70, but I'm glad to say that Joel became one of my friends while there, even though we were not in the same dorm (I was third floor Grove Terrace, and he was, if memory serves, located in the 360 men's dorm that year), nor even the same classes that I recall.
Somehow we met, and he being a southern gentleman from Georgia, and I a more northerly southerner from Missouri, but raised mostly in Oklahoma City, it was a mutual friendship and congenial relationship; one I have always cherished and will never forget.
Here are a couple of my caricature sketches of Joel made that year. He was an amiable enough model willing to pose for my still-budding artistic attempts:
Although I didn't know Joel that long, news of his death that cold January in 1972 came as quite a shock for me (I was then in my second year at the University of Missouri in Kansas City). Not long afterward I made the gut-wrenching decision to leave college and strike out on my own, moving away from home to Denver, where I started my first business as a graphic and commercial artist.
Perhaps it was learning about the shocking death of my former good friend Joel that had something to do with that. A few years later, in 1973, my brother Terry and I had a similar experience driving from Denver to Pasadena, trying to sleep one bitter cold night on the side of the road approaching Albuquerque NM from the north. (Who, other that someone used to living in the desert, could have known it gets so cold at night in that otherwise very warm clime?)
Had I remained at AC another two years, I now realize, the way our friendship began (although Joel was nearly two years younger than I, being the youngest to enter AC at that time, at age 16), I might have joined and been with him on that fatal trip, and as a result never lived to marry and have many children and grandchildren now.
Or perhaps that might have changed something in the heavenly scheme of things, and both Joel and Dan Faulk (who died with him, but whom I never knew while a student at AC) might still be alive and kickin' today. Or not, I suppose.
In any case, Joel has been dearly missed all these years, and I'm still as saddened by his sudden and rather ignominious passing, as I was that bitter day in January '72 when I first learned of his death.
Anne seems to recall hearing Joel give a sermonette, about spiritual icebergs, in Ft. Worth, on October 2, 1971 (six years to the day before she and I first met in Pasadena, at her Terrace Villa dorm). She remembers writing down his name for this AC student sent out on a pre-ministerial program during Worldwide's feast time, but says she also might be mistaken about who it was.
She was still in High School at the time, but Joel's speech (if that was him) might have had something to do with her attending AC finally, at first in Big Sandy, then Pasadena for her senior year. If so, Joel was perhaps posthumously partly responsible for our meeting, and marrying in '78, and for all the children and grandchildren we have had since.
If so, I'll certainly look forward to getting reacquainted with and thanking him some day, after the resurrection!
In any case, I still miss Joel and send my condolences to all who knew or were related to him, who also still mourn his untimely passing from this "veil of tears" we call life in this carnal age.