a.k.a. V.J.

The medical building on the SUNY Oswego campus is called the Mary Walker Health Center. When I was a student there, we used to refer to it simply as “Mary Walker,” as if we were talking about a person rather than a building. If you told someone you were running a fever and experiencing flu-like symptoms, the response might be, “You should go to Mary Walker and get checked out.” (The running joke back then was that, if you went to Mary Walker with any ailment at all, be it a common cold, a ruptured spleen, or severe head trauma, the staff there would invariably give you Sudafed and send you on your way. But I digress.)

At the time, I never gave any thought to who Mary Walker the person was or why a college health center might be named after her. At some point after graduation, I did eventually learn about her. The details of her life and accomplishments are incredibly impressive. There is now a plaque on campus near the health center that provides a few of the broad strokes of her story:

The plaque just barely scratches the surface. Not only was Dr. Walker the first woman ever awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, but she remains the only female recipient. She was an abolitionist, a prisoner of war, a suffragette, and a philanthropist. Dr. Walker was also controversial for publicly wearing men’s clothes at a time when that was considered scandalous; so scandalous that she was arrested a few times for doing so. There are accounts of her in her later years, strolling around Oswego in a man’s suit and top hat, sporting her Medal of Honor, much to the chagrin of the pearl-clutchers of the era.

While Mary Walker is a favorite daughter of Oswego, very few people beyond this county have heard of her. That is about to change. The U.S. Mint announced recently that Dr. Walker will be featured on the reverse side of some quarters in 2024 as part of the American Women Quarters™ Program. To my knowledge, that would make her the first Oswego County native to be depicted on U.S. currency (although she wouldn’t be the first Central New Yorker to be so honored, as William Seward once appeared on the Fifty-Dollar Treasury Note for reasons I don’t entirely understand).

If you live in the U.S., check your pocket change next year. It might just contain the likeness of an Oswego County hero and the name that launched countless doses of Sudafed.

Congratulations, Dr. Walker. You’re so money and you don’t even know it!