Co-Founder & Educator
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Although he died shortly before the founding of Oakland Leaf, Nate Walrod is a continuing presence in the Leaf family. His belief that “Love is an action” informs our work on a daily basis.
Nate Walrod was raised in Berkeley in an affluent professional family. Despite his sheltered childhood, he became aware of class and racial differences at an early age and was troubled by them.
As an adolescent Nate’s world was rocked, first by the destruction of his home in a fire and then three years later by the sudden and unexpected death of his mother, Anne. These losses led him to engage deeply in the question of what it means to love someone and instilled in him a wish to nurture children.
After attending Colorado College where he studied psychology, philosophy, and history, he joined the Teach for America program and was assigned to teach in east Oakland, where he made his home, first on 98th Street and finally on 34th Street, just a few doors down from the current Oakland Leaf office.
At this time he set up a charitable fund at the San Francisco Foundation, using money that he had inherited following his mother’s death. He named his fund the “Love Cultivating Assets Fund.” Today Oakland Leaf is its main beneficiary.
Nate worked at Cox Elementary School and then at the EC Reems Academy, where he taught poetry to elementary school students. His students knew and loved him as the teacher who always greeted them and departed their classes with the call and response, “May peace be with you, poets.”
At this time Nate and several of his friends began to dream of additional ways to support their students. Their dreams led them to organize and stage the first All-Oakland Talent Show in the spring of 2001 and to sow the seeds for what would become Oakland Leaf.
In 2002 Nate decided to take a year off from teaching to live and study in Cuba. He renamed himself “Namuh,” which is “human” spelled backwards, and rode a motorcycle to Cancun before boarding a plane to Havana. In Cuba he wrote poetry, drew, drummed, and danced, while studying Spanish and Cuban educational methods. However, in November he interrupted his stay in Cuba when he learned that his grandmother was dying of cancer. He flew to Cancun, got back on his motorcycle, and headed north, but a day and a half into his trip he crashed and died near the Tabasco/Chiapas border in Mexico.
In one of his poems Nate wrote, “A life of love is many seconds of love, many actions, leaps of faith over fear of loss, of a lowering.” For him love was more than a thought or even a feeling. Love was an action. His memory inspires all of us at Oakland Leaf to translate our love – for children, our community, for art and nature – into action.
Love is an Action