Norma Walker with racecar driver Joe Lahmen. Image courtesy of AHMHS Photographic Collection.

Norma Walker awarding Fire Chief William Hawkins and assistant Frank Bruner for outstanding fire prevention program. Image courtesy of AHMHS Photographic Collection.

Norma Walker with Navy plane and pilots at Buckley Air Guard Base. Image courtesy of AHMHS Photographic Collection.

Norma Walker at her desk. Image courtesy of AHMHS Photographic Collection.

The Aurora Fox Arts Center presents a free public reading of a new play,
“Onward and Upward: The Norma Walker Story” by Melissa Lucero McCarl

Wednesday, Oct. 9 at 7 p.m.

Aurora Fox Studio Theater

Free; General Admission

Ticket reservations recommended.

Meet Norma Walker, a woman of her time yet ahead of her time. Norma was – and remains – Aurora’s first female mayor from 1965-67.

From the theatrically rich mind of local award-winning playwright, Melissa Lucero McCarl, comes an Aurora Fox Arts Center original commission, “Onward and Upward: The Norma Walker Story.” The play celebrates how personal grit and resilience, enhanced by a call to service, informed Norma Walker’s care of both her city and her family without losing her unique personable authentic self.

Much more than a personal history, the play mines the rich traditions of theatrical storytelling – an intergenerational ensemble, fluidity of time and place, and pop culture touchstones – to spotlight universal truths within one woman’s journey.

Norma’s story is one of local Aurora mid-20th century politics as informed (and reflected upon) within her various roles: mother, small business owner, artist, and Depression-era child in the wilds of south-eastern Colorado. Norma’s sense of building community empowered arts and culture, LGBTQ+ allyship, civic pride, and the groundwork for Aurora’s growth and development. 

McCarl’s dynamic and moving dialogue incorporates Walker’s own writings with archival materials in the spirit of the nonfictional novel and documentary theatre.