Brotherly Love
Sibling Security Officers Marty & Mark Walkowe are Driven by Compassion and Community
By Kathy McPherson ’66, Former Associate Director of Marketing & Communications
One was a police officer who spent years doing criminal investigation, much of it working with sexual assault cases. The other, also a retired police officer, was a school resource officer who worked with kids so disadvantaged that at least one of them lived in a home with no electricity.
That sort of police-work background may seem surprising for Durham Academy’s 12-member security team, but DA security director Jim Cleary knew the two would be a good fit. He hired brothers Mark Walkowe and Marty Walkowe just four months apart in 2022, when each of them retired from the Durham Police Department.
Marty, now DA’s assistant director of security, and Mark quickly grew to love the school community. Marty laughs, recalling his wife’s observation that he seemed depressed when DA was closed for icy weather. “I was like, it’s been more than two days. I’ve got to get back to my community.”
The Walkowe brothers are no strangers to cold weather. They grew up in a small farm town, population 3,000, in South Central Michigan.
“Growing up, we didn’t have a whole lot, but we never knew that,” Marty says. “We always felt like we were wealthy. Our parents took really good care of us.”
They were always looking for ways to support Mark, Marty and their four sisters. Their dad’s industriousness was an inspiration.
“When times were slow in the wintertime, when everything was solid ice and snow, he would load us up, spend time out in the woods cutting firewood,” Marty remembers. “We would sell that, go to campgrounds and sit on the back of the truck, yelling ‘firewood!’’’
William Walkowe, Mark and Marty’s father, instilled in his sons dedication and compassion.
Their father worked for a builder, learning skills that enabled him to build his own house, adding on to it as the family grew and enlisting Mark and Marty to lift beams. He later started his own construction business.
“Dad was not afraid to do anything and use whatever resources he needed to,” Mark says.
It was a lesson the brothers were quick to learn. Mark, who has been a licensed general contractor for more than 20 years, has built several houses. Marty, while not a licensed builder, subcontracted the home he lives in today.
“Even as a little kid you would be faced with a challenge of something that you haven’t done, and Dad’s response was ‘always do something, even if it’s wrong. Don’t be afraid to try,’” Marty said.
A Christian faith had always been important to the Walkowe family, but it became even more so after Mark was gravely ill with ulcerative colitis in his late teens. His weight had dropped from 200 to 160 pounds, he had been hospitalized for nearly six weeks and he was facing surgery to remove his lower bowel and colon. When a nurse asked Mark if he would like for her prayer group to come in and pray, he said yes.
“And two days from that, the doctor said, ‘I don’t know what just happened here, but you don’t have any ulcers in your colon, in your lower bowel anymore.’ They would check the lower bowel every day because of how bad I was. And then a week later, he said, ‘Whatever you’re doing, keep it up.’ ... From that time on, I got better and better, and then no more problems.”
“For our entire family, it’s straight up Jesus,” Marty says. “We’re all Christians. … We grew up in a Christian church, but until you have that relationship, you really don’t realize, you don’t value life the way I think you could.”
Marty came to the Durham Police Department in 1994, after graduating from East Carolina University, working in the family business and taking classes at Durham Technical Community College, where an instructor recommended he try police work.
“God has directed me all through my life, and one of the hard parts is allowing yourself to go somewhere uncomfortable,” Marty says.
Working as a rape investigator, he was inspired by victims’ courage. “You see how a criminal act of anger and violence can affect somebody for the rest of their life. Having the ability to communicate with somebody who has been through such a traumatic situation was so rewarding for me,” Marty says. “You really get to see what people go through, how they feel and really consider the fact that this isn’t going to be something that you’re going to be able to fix. It gave me a different lens when it came to looking at people and understanding that people have pasts, people have been abused as children, and they just don’t get over it.”
Mark came to police work a number of years later. His work as a school resource officer made a tremendous impact on him and on the elementary schools he served. He grew up with a processing disorder and felt a kinship with students facing their own struggles.
“When I was in school, it used to drive me nuts that teachers would call on me and I just didn’t have time to process it,” he says. “I would act out. And I was one of those kids that was a ‘problem’ in school. So coming into the schools, I just really felt a niche with the kids who were having problems.
“I remember this kid, it was a life changer, Mark recalls, his voice cracking. “This kid was ‘wrong’ all the time, every day in the classroom, and I was always judging that.”
He was asked to go to the boy’s house because the school had been unable to contact his mother. “It was a 20-degree day when we went to that house. There were electric lines coming from the neighbor’s house to that kid’s house. There were space heaters inside. That was a real change in my position. I was like, ‘God, I will never judge somebody just because of their behavior.’ It was one of the best things that could have ever happened, because it really gave me an idea of what these kids are going through.”
Mark says being a school resource officer “really felt like you’re doing something that’s going to make a difference in these kids’ lives.” He subsequently began a mentor program to work with students on the weekend.
“It was the most rewarding thing that I’ve ever done, because a lot of those kids were just kids that had no parents, or no active dad in the family, or a mom that’s just struggling. Some of those kids were having processing issues like I had in school. I remember one kid who, when I started working with him in fourth grade, he didn’t know how to read one word — he couldn’t.”
Marty says every time he calls his brother, “he’s always doing something either for himself, a family member, a neighbor, or somebody that just couldn’t afford to have somebody do it. That’s his gift, you know.”
And as for Marty, Mark said his brother (who is 18 months younger) “is the smart one. Any questions I have, I always run it by Marty. … He’s got a really incredible gift for telling people how to navigate things. Marty, since we were little, has had an incredible sense of right and wrong, always a sense of reason in our many life experiences.”