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          J. Lamah Walker grew up on the gold coast of Florida, where at the age of 10, a fourth-grade classmate introduced him to the beautiful world of Orchids.  By the time he was in the eighth and ninth grades, he had been hybridizing, flasking seeds and selling his blooms to a local florist.  The advent of college created, not a temporary, but long separation from a passionate love affair with orchids.
          Lamah moved to the state of New Mexico in 1967 and because he had the misconceived notion that orchids could not grow in the ‘desert’, it wasn't until 11  years ago that growing orchids once again became an integral part of his lifestyle. He now has two modest greenhouses at his home in Cedar Crest where he grows both warm and cool varieties. His favorite genus is Odontoglossum and their many inter-generic hybrids.
          As an indication of his expertise and knowledge of orchids and their culture, Lamah has had some sixty-three of his orchids receive flower quality and recognition awards from the American Orchid Society (AOS).  He and once a very dear friend, Diann O'Neill, had  entered a number of floor displays at AOS sanctioned shows in Wichita, Oklahoma City, Austin, Denver, Tulsa, San Antonio, Houston, and Albuquerque. The results were more than astounding considering the two of them won top honors in every show with the singular exception of a Denver, Colorado; a bastion of narrow-minded and closeted bigots. You may remember the infamous "Proposition 2" the the Supreme Court eventually rules as being un-Constitutional. This impressive and copious array of top awards included eight AOS Show Trophies and seven ODC (Orchid Digest Corporation) Show Trophies  all within the period of just two show seasons.  This many awards within this diminutive timeframe has never been matched or even approached by any other show participants.
          Lamah has also attended Orchids shows where the distance was simply too great for displaying his own unique talents. These shows included such varied locations as Hawaii, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and Miami. He has also made orchid-related trips to New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, Mexico, Scotland, Holland, and Costa Rica. Lamah is always ready and willing to share his acquired knowledge and enthusiasm for orchids, the largest family of all flowering plants (over some estimated thirty thousand different species known to date!).
          Lamah was once a student in the AOS Judging Program and last attended monthly judgings at the Great Plains Judging Center in Oklahoma City.  That all came to a screeching halt in June of 1999 because some of the judges in the AOS have rather outspokenness bigoted attitudes which landed the American Orchid Society in a Federal District Court defending the politically offensive behavior or some of its once more noted members of its rather flippant and superficial aristocracy.   Locally he was active in New Mexico’s then newest AOS affiliated society, Zia Orchid Growers (ZOG); an organization that he was initial responsible for its conception.  ZOG had once become the largest group of orchid growers in the state under the guidance of J. Lamah, and they are at least still active unlike the original New Mexico Orchid society which eventually died of its own to internal combustion.  ZOG, as the sole and direct result of J. Lamah's earned respect, strategic political diplomacy and astute leadership, had their first major orchid show at the then new Rio Grande Botanic Garden in November of 1997.  At that time orchids was the first and only outside botanical group given the unique privilege of showing at the Botanic Garden.
          In the year 2001 a new group was launched as an alternative to the American Orchid Society that has become antiquated with its bigoted attitudes and exclusive nature; Orchid Guild of the Americas. They had grown in the course of just one year to become the premiere orchid group in New Mexico with their sites set on the entire Western Hemisphere.  Their emphasis will always be education first and certainly the full enjoyment of orchids. 

            J. Lamah Walker, a graduate of the University of Miami (B.A. in Psychology & Religion) and Georgia State University (B.A. in Sociology/Criminology), received his M.Ed. from West Texas State in Community Counseling and then his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in the Administration of Higher Education.  While completing his graduate degree at the University of Oklahoma, J. Lamah was honored as the last recipient of The Robert E. Ohm Dissertation Assistance Memorial Award for his ground-breaking ideas and outstanding scholarship as an advanced graduate student in the field of higher education and general administration.  Because of J. Lamah's compassionate desire to be of service to others as a healer of broken self-images and spirit, he last served as a clinical psychotherapist at the Student Health Center at the University of New Mexico.  Outside those notoriously protective confines of that academic ivory tower, J. Lamah has been a general contractor and real estate broker in New Mexico for some thirty years and was ordained as a minister of the Gospel at the age of nineteen in his parent’s inter-denominational Christian church, New Age Church of Truth.  This dynamic and most resourceful Renaissance man more than anything else dramatically represents the old Stoic aphorism that: "Life makes philosophers of us all."  Besides all the other accomplishments of this unusual man, he is also a storyteller with this one very inspiring tale to share that is only enhanced by his having been initiated as a Medicine Man by a member of the Bear Clan.  Visit: http://SanDamiano.net for even more information and read this tale of love set in the Land of Enchantment during the Mexican Period of the New Mexico territory in the first half of the Eighteenth Century; Shamans of San Damiano.    J Lamah is also quite the philosopher and much of his modern-day Renaissance thinking is eloquently expressed on his Age of Reality website: http://TheAgeofReality.net.  Explore the mind of this exception man and expand your personal and spiritual horizons.

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