Sometimes he’d say his full name was Donald Lancelot Louis Willingham Walton the Third. Most of us came to call him Doc: a raconteur, an athlete, and a lover of stories and books (Dickens was his all time favorite). He was a husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. And on April 26, 2025, the legend legally known as Donald Louis Walton, 84, passed away at his home in St. Augustine, FL after a heroic battle with multiple forms of cancer.

Born on St. Patrick’s Day in 1941 in Northern New Jersey, Doc took up the calling of his patron saint and was known to wrangle garter snakes back in the day, and possibly even bigger reptiles in Florida as a young man working construction and roofing (or was it that he might have boxed a young Cassius Clay?). A tri-letter athlete at Livingston High School (Go Lancers!), Doc relished being on any playing field and especially loved basketball, playing well into his forties, and coaching kids at the local YMCA into his sixties (Go Broncos! Go Nuggets!). He also became an avid golfer, talking of its way of calming even his overactive monkey mind: “wherever you go, there you are.”

In 1962 he married Linda Kievning and had two sons. A man who was always restless and curious about what was beyond the horizon, he traveled the country looking for answers to the big questions, and settled in Denver, CO, bringing his young family out West in 1972, eventually parting from Linda but co-parenting his boys. In 1976 he married Joyce “Charly” Reef and together they created a blended family (their version of The Brady Bunch). Their home was full of laughter and music (mostly blues, doo-wop, soul and a quest for the best version of “I Put A Spell On You”), movies (old talkies or horror preferred), friends, pets, and lively conversation, punctuated by Doc’s emphatic hand gestures and generous laugh. Doc had a penchant for collecting strays, whether they be animal or human, and there were often strangers at the table for any given holiday. He worked many jobs over the years but most people will remember him as a bartender, as someone who could talk to anyone, finding points of connection and common humanity with whoever sidled up to the bar.

One of Doc’s trademark sayings was, “We’re on our feet and headed for the door.” In 1999 Doc and Charly were in fact on their feet and on the move from Denver to Arboles, CO to run the general store, and then in 2004 they took another huge leap to retire in Boquete, Panama, where they created a vibrant group of friends, and were soon joined by Doc’s brother Raymond. Doc played golf in the jungle, hiked the volcano, went to both oceans, danced on the balcony with Charly, tried to keep his dogs from eating the neighbor’s chickens, learned Spanish, and noodled on the guitar. This was a man who jumped out of an airplane (and took his wife and sons with him) for his 50th birthday. “Big fun,” Doc would say.

Doc wrote of his adventures, creating the prolific blog “Monkeymind,” with over 700 entries in 10 years, writing as a humorist with heart. Immensely proud of his family, he would often regale strangers with the many feats and accomplishments of his children and grandchildren. In 2013 Doc and Charly moved to St. Augustine, FL, right off the 9th fairway of the golf course in The Shores. Even after he could no longer play, Doc would get picked up on the fairway behind the house by a friend with a golf cart and head to the clubhouse to chat and have a drink (and maybe a cigar), ever ready for the next good story.

“Alrighty then,” Donald Lancelot Louis Willingham Walton the Third might say, as he heads out for his next adventure. Doc will be sorely missed by his friends and family, who will continue the story without him, and try to make it 10% as interesting as he would have.

Doc is survived by his brother Raymond; his sons Donald and Todd; daughters Laura, Kira and Dara; grandchildren Jesse, Cody, Carson, Keely, and Jackson; great-grandchildren Easton and Atlas.

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