WNY man seeking help to find photos from his bagpipe-playing past
ANDOVER, N.Y. (WIVB) — Stephen Walker has been playing the bagpipes ever since he was 12 years old, and he’s hoping for some help finding mementos from his musical past.
“I was always around this stuff, my grandfather was a Scottish immigrant, my mother’s branches of family were Irish, so we were kind of in this culture all along,” Walker said.
His fingers continued to play the notes throughout the years, as he also began to create his own celtic jewelry.
“When I got out of high school I had all types of romantic ideas about going off and finding the craftsman apprentice in myself in Scotland or Ireland and I went on that mission,” Walker said.
Walker, now 67, said when he traveled overseas, someone suggested he play his bagpipes on the street, and so he picked up the pipes. From 1975 to 1977, you could hear his tune through the streets of London, Paris, and Dublin.
“It was fun and the people were from all over the world because I tended to play where the tourists were. And just thousands of people took my picture,” Walker said.
He’s hoping with the luck of the Irish and getting the word out that someone may be out there with a photograph that would make a great addition to his photo album.
“These days if you don’t have pictures it didn’t happen,” Walker said. “And it did happen and there are pictures but we just haven’t gotten them.”
So what would he look like in those photos? He said he always wore a red kilt and didn’t have a beard in those days.
Walker added he never even saw any of the thousands of pictures tourists would take of him as it was way before the digital age. He’s offering the first person to send him an email or Facebook message with a photo of himself playing back then a $1,000 gift card to his store, Walker’s Metalsmith’s Celtic Jewelry.
“It’ll mean that we really connected somebody somewhere,” Walker said.
He hopes to find a photo by St. Patrick’s day, but he will continue to search for one until they strike gold.
If you or somebody you know has a photo of Walker, you can email them to service@walkermetalsmiths.com or by Messenger on Facebook here.
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Hope Winter is a reporter and multimedia journalist who has been part of the News 4 team since 2021. See more of her work here.
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