His nephew remembers him as a guy that had a way of bringing light to everything around him, the kind of guy that worked hard and tried to make everything a little bit better. “We were nine months apart. Even though he was my uncle, he was like a brother to me,” Darrell Cranford said. “We worked at Walmart together for 10 years before I got the job at the B-Mart Distribution Center in Eugene. Walter was with Walmart for the past 15 years, and eventually transferred to Cottage Grove a year or so ago.”