Still Waters Run Deep:
Meet the Synod Moderator

by Don Padget

In Newsweek magazine some months ago I read that to find somebody’s importance, google them (go to the search engine Google and type in their name). After my wife and I visited Nolan Waller, I googled him and found the E. Nolan Waller Scholarship in Accountancy at the University of Mississippi. The scholarship is awarded to a student who has completed an undergraduate degree in accountancy and is enrolled in the master’s accountancy program. That’s pretty impressive. But Nolan himself is impressive — as a Christian, a Presbyterian, and the 2003 Moderator of the Synod of Living Waters. Nolan doesn’t try to impress. He’s a quiet, friendly man, a little old-fashioned in his humility. He absolutely refuses to brag on himself. And when I asked him how he wanted to be remembered he said “as a man who always tried to do the good thing, who spoke only when necessary and kept his words short.” Maybe he learned this lesson from his favorite Bible character. Peter, Nolan said, had a habit of putting his foot in his mouth, thinking about what he said, regretting it, learning from it, and moving on. Peter never let his mistakes paralyze him, Nolan added. Nolan was born and raised a Baptist, but we won’t hold that against him since he had the good sense to marry a Presbyterian. We owe a great deal to his wife Louise who stuck to her Presbyterian roots and finally brought Nolan into the fold. After years of attendance and service, each year becoming a little less Baptist and a little more Presbyterian, Nolan joined the Presbyterian Church in 1983 and was elected to the session on the same day he joined.

He has always been committed to and active in his church — he taught Sunday School, served on several committees and the session at the Oxford, Mississippi, Presbyterian Church, twice moderated St. Andrews Presbytery, and now is moderator of Synod. He and I agreed that everybody of good sense should be Presbyterian, but I asked him what, realistically, were his hopes for the church. Nolan said he “hopes it will develop a more dynamic witness and be more active in society. However,” he added, “it can be more socially active only if it is more spiritually active too.” Nolan has a life besides the church. He grew up on a farm outside of Oxford, and planned to stay there; grow cows and cotton and beans for the rest of his life. In high school he told the counselor he had no intention of going to college, and he took the non-college entrance courses. But the army intervened. Nolan was drafted during the Korean War and sent to Korea as an infantryman. When he returned home, he decided to look into the G.I. Bill, and that’s when he got what he said was the best advice he ever received. The admissions officer looked at him doubtfully, and said, “If you are willing to work very, very hard, you can go to Ole Miss.” The first semester Nolan got four A’s and a B, and within three years, he graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Master of Business Administration. He worked much of his career in the business research office, and in the Ole Miss Library, I found about ten business research papers by E. Nolan Waller. He later moved into other fields in the Business Department, and when he retired after 40 years, he was Assistant to the Dean with the rank of Assistant Professor. Nolan and Louise are active in their retirement working in the church and in their garden. Nolan grows a large garden and tends it with an ancient tiller (that I thought would take two stout men to operate) and a tractor. He dreams one day of having a bulldozer to shape his farm up right. When I asked Nolan his favorite Bible passage, he said, “John 3:16, of course, but that’s everybody’s favorite. My other favorite is Philippians 4:19, ‘My God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.’” Nolan himself is a satisfied man, and the Synod is in good hands this year with Nolan Waller as moderator.