Spartan Profiles: Marc Walker
NATIONAL RACING CHAMPION
Every year for the past 42 years, the nation’s best amateur road racers have competed at the Sports Car Club of America National Championship Runoffs. This year’s championship race took place September in Lexington, OH, at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The winner of the Sports 2000 class was Marc E. Walker, ’80, an investment trader with Raymond James & Associates.
Walker, of Oldsmar, FL, started racing in 1996 and has been to the national championship four times, finishing in the Top 5 three times. “(Besides Mid Ohio), the tracks we race on are Sebring and Daytona (Florida), Road Atlanta and Roebling Road (Savannah, Georgia), Virginia International Raceway (Alton, VA), and Watkins Glen (NY),” says Marc.
A native of Orchard Lake, he stayed in Michigan to attend MSU while his family moved to Georgia. “I loved it,” he says of his college experience. “I learned so much, and I had so much fun.”
Did anyone here influence him? “Yes, Elton B. Hill,” says Marc. “He was a professor emeritus, in his seventies, and he was the adviser for Sigma Chi. He was a great, great man and we had some great conversations.”
While in East Lansing he owned an MG Midget and did some autocross races. “They were pretty casual races,” he recalls. “I didn’t become really serious until the mid-1990s.”
After graduating MSU, Marc worked for a securities brokerage business in Atlanta, Georgia. After moving to a couple of different firms, he landed in St. Petersburg, FL, with Raymond James & Associates as an Institutional Equity Trader covering mutual funds, and other types of large investment managers.
His wife Becky is a graduate of Kentucky and a basketball fan. “I usually root for Kentucky just as she roots for Michigan State,” he says “But last year (when MSU beat Kentucky in the Austin, TX, NCAA regionals) we went to a bar and we wished each other luck and went our separate ways.”