Well-known driving instructor Graham Walker passes away

Graham McKenzie Walker passed away peacefully in his sleep on 6 August. He was 87 years old.

Graham was well known as a driving instructor and author of a book about the Cayman Islands driving code and learning to drive. He was also active in the Cayman Islands Veteran’s Association.

Graham was born on 22 June 1938 in London to James Duncan Walker and Rachel Stella Bottomley-Smith.

As a young man, he was obsessed with aircraft and flying and he received a scholarship to the Royal Air Force Flying College in Cranwell, but a broken nose in a game of rugby made him medically unfit for flying jet fighter planes.

In 1956, he joined the UK Royal Air Force as a radio engineer and the following year at age 18, he was posted to an army flying unit and took part in the invasion of Egypt to recover control of the Suez Canal, which had been nationalized by then Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser.

In 1959, he was recalled back to the Royal Air Force where he worked at a missile research and testing range in Wales. It was here that Graham met his first wife Maureen Watson, and they went on to have five children.

They later moved with the Royal Air Force to Germany and then back to the UK, where Graham went to work for a UK Ministry of Defense establishment developing equipment to locate Russian nuclear-powered submarines.

In 1979, he was head hunted by GEC, a company developing equipment to detect submarines, and he continued with this company until 1981, when he secured a place at St. Stephens College, Oxford to train to become a priest.

By this time Graham was divorced and he found his job and life raising young children to be stressful. He did not complete his training to become a priest and instead developed a dependency on alcohol.

In March 1982, he recognized he had a problem and stopped drinking. He started regularly attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and he did not touch another drop of alcohol or any mind- or mood-altering substances from that date to the day he died 43 years later.

After sobering up, Graham secured a job at another defense company called EMI and a few years later he met Elizabeth Boxall, who was by then divorced from her husband Ian, and they fell in love and soon married. He moved to the Cayman Islands in 1989.

Graham was a Christian and he was always a very community-minded person. He got involved with various charities including Cayman Against Substance Abuse, the annual Cayman Islands Air Show and the Cayman Islands Cancer Society.

Graham also helped support and encourage a lot of people in their own journey of sobriety and he would sometimes carry meetings into Northward prison to encourage others to embrace a sober life.

In 1985, while attending a conference in Montreal, he heard a counsellor from Texas speaking about employee assistance programmes and that inspiration later led to the founding of the Cayman Islands Employee Assistance Programme, as a joint venture of the Government and the Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce.

Three years later, the Employee Assistance Programme became fully independent of Government and the Chamber and it became a limited company. In the year 2000, Graham became president of the Employee Assistance Programme in the Cayman Islands.

In 1992, he started the Cayman Islands Driving School, and he went on to train thousands of people to drive. He also wrote and published a comprehensive Cayman Islands driving code book, which he updated every year.

In 1996, the Road Safety Advisory Council was established, and Graham was president of the council until 2004.

For many years, Graham was very involved in the Cayman Islands Veteran’s Association, and it was a very important part of his life. He felt very privileged to represent the Cayman Islands at the tri-annual conference of the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League in Malta in May 2012.

Sadly, due to increasing infirmity, he became less and less involved in the veteran’s association, but over the years they were an incredible source of support and assistance and for that reason, any donations in his memory should go the Cayman Islands Veteran’s Association.

Left to mourn Graham’s passing are his wife, Elizabeth Walker, his children by his first marriage: Sue Leonard, Samantha Willett, Jacqui Walker, Richard Walker and Tony Walker; stepchildren Simon Boxall and Joanna Boxall; sons-in-law Mike Leonard and Neil Willett. daughters-in-law Maggie Walker and Donna Walker; 10 grandchildren; nine great-grandchildren; his sister Patricia Pounds; and many other special friends, including carer Eloise Stewart, Dr. Ginny Hobday and the staff at the Cayman Clinic, Niamh and the staff at ENT in Cayman; and the Veteran’s Association.

A service of thanksgiving for the life of Graham Walker will be held on Saturday 20 September 2025 at 2 pm at the Elmslie Memorial Church in George Town.

Condolences can be registered at the Bodden Funeral Services’ website or Facebook page.

Note: Compass journalist Simon Boxall was the stepson of Graham Walker