Walker Alumni Follow Their Dreams

The Walker School welcomed back two alumni to campus this week who shared their experiences following their dreams through basketball and books. Dr. Jerry Logan, Walker Class of 2003, is Assistant Dean of Faculty Affairs for Brown University’s School of Public Health and an author who has written two basketball-themed books. Caroline Kunetz Tillman, Class of 2014, wanted to share her love of books with Marietta and now owns The Reading Attic on the Marietta Square with her mother.  Logan co-wrote the books “The Cinderella Strategy: The Game Plan Behind Butler University’s Rise to Prominence” and “Unbracketed: Big-Time College Basketball Done the Right Way.”  “These books are about what do you do when you’re the Cinderella story and all of a sudden everybody is looking at you and you’ve captured some magic and yet you know it's going to go flitting away next year when there’s another Cinderella team and everybody cares about them and nobody remembers you,” he said.  Basketball has been the driving force in Logan’s life since he came to Walker in ninth grade, and he credits the sport with giving him lifelong skills, best friends and with meeting his wife. “If I look at my life, everything is because of basketball,” he said. “I ended up where I went to college because of basketball [four-year standout at Gordon College]; I met my wife there, met my best friends there. If I don’t play basketball, I go somewhere else and it’s fine, but I’m pretty happy with the way things are, and that wouldn’t have happened without basketball.”

“And if I had a bad experience [at Walker] my life surely would have gone in a different direction, so the fact that I had the basketball experience that I had here, too, I’m really proud of that.” 

Logan said he appreciated his time at Walker because of the friendships he gained and because “I had coaches who would challenge me intellectually. [Basketball] is not just about what we do with our bodies, it’s what we do with our minds.”

Tillman said she didn’t always enjoy what she had to read in high school, but books grew on her, particularly in college. 

“Books were an outlet, they were a way to put yourself in a different area for a little bit and I loved them,” she said. “I love the imagination and being able to pretend you’re in a different world.”

When she moved back to Marietta, she said she found out that “I really loved Marietta and the community and felt like something was missing.”

She said bookstores are her go-to when traveling, and she wanted that for Marietta. The Reading Attic is a place for people who “want a different place to work from the normal coffee shops.” While Tillman said she is not a writer, it was also important to her to provide a place for local authors to showcase their work. 

“A lot of authors have written multiple books and have had only one picked up,” she said. “I wanted to be that catalyst, that support behind local and Indie authors and make dreams come true.”

Logan and Tillman both spoke to Upper School students about pursuing their dreams. 

“It’s one of those things where anything you love, you’ve got to hear a lot of nos often before you get a yes unless you’re a genius or super talented,” Logan said. “That was not me. That’s not most of us. What has worked for me is having a general sense of direction, and if I find a little path through the branches, I’ll take it.”

Tillman said “When you have a dream and you love something and you’re passionate about it, you will find a way to make it happen. It’s not always clean. It’s not always pretty, but it’s worth it.”

The Reading Attic is located at 21 W Park Square, Marietta, GA 30060