Rachel Mellon Walton was the quiet, strong matriarch of Pittsburgh’s most prominent family and was once the longest-serving board member of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. She was also a longtime member of the Women’s Committee of Carnegie Museum of Art. She died in March 2006 at the age of 107.
Walton donated her time as well as her financial resources to organizations including the Women’s Center and Shelter in Shadyside, the Children’s Institute, the Garden Club of Allegheny County, The Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Mellon Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Beechwood Farms Nature Preserve and the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti.
She endowed a chair for the first oboe of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in memory of her brother, who was a lifelong oboe player. Walton and her sister, Margaret Mellon Hitchcock, honored their mother by establishing the Mary Taylor Mellon Scholarship for Women at Carnegie Mellon University’s Business School. In 1971, when Heinz Hall opened, her contribution created the Mary Taylor Mellon green room.
Now, through the Rachel Mellon Walton Fund, established in 1970 at The Pittsburgh Foundation, her giving will continue in perpetuity.