R. B. Walden

Robert B. Walden, known as R. B. Walden (April 14, 1901 – February 6, 1966), was the director of the Louisiana Department of Hospitals, who in 1964 directed the desegregation of the network of state charity hospitals.

Walden was born near Jackson in Terry, a town in Hinds County, Mississippi. His family thereafter moved to Winnsboro, the seat of Franklin Parish in northeast Louisiana, where Walden graduated in 1918 from Winnsboro High School. He then obtained both his Bachelor of Arts and LL.B. degrees from Louisiana State University and Louisiana State University Law Center in Baton Rouge. On June 18, 1924, he married the former Lillian Cordill^[1] (November 26, 1902–February 23, 1996)^[2] in Winnsboro, and the couple had two daughters.^[1]

A Democrat, Walden first practiced law in Winnsboro, where he served as mayor from 1926 to 1934. He became an attorney for the Louisiana State Hospital Board and hence relocated in 1940 to Baton Rouge, where he was assistant secretary of the Louisiana Tax Commission and chairman of State Employees Retirement System. He organized the Department of Hospitals Credit Union, the largest among the state employee groups, and he was the president of the credit union for many years. In 1948, he was named acting director of Louisiana Civil Service, the system of employee regulations and protections launched in 1940 by the New Orleans attorney Charles E. Dunbar. During the administration of Governor Robert F. Kennon, Walden was general counsel for the civil service department.^[1] Kennon and Walden had both been young mayors in the middle 1920s, Walden in Winnsobro, and Kennon in Minden.

In June 1964, Governor John J. McKeithen, who the previous year ended Robert Kennon's hopes of a gubernatorial comeback, named Walden director of the Department of Hospitals. He launched improvements in mental hospitals and construction of facilities for the mentally retarded. In addition to ordering integration of the facilities, he helped to establish the framework for the Medicare program in Louisiana but died less than a year after U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the measure into law.^[1]

Walden was a member of the First Baptist Church of Baton Rouge and was affiliated with the Masonic lodge and the Shriners. He was also a member of Delta Sigma Chi, Phi Delta Phi, Lambda Chi Alpha and the state and local bar associations.^[1] The Waldens are interred at Roselawn Memorial Park in Baton Rouge.^[3]

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