Vera Walker wouldn't feel complete today without her Easter bonnet. It's a tradition that dates back to when the 83-year-old pastor's wife was a girl.

''I think it's more becoming of a lady to wear a hat, especially if she's going to church,'' said Walker, whose husband, the Rev. Louis Walker, pastors St. Ashworth Temple Church of God in Christ on Vernon Odom Boulevard in Akron. ''I think the hat is the beauty of a lady, but women aren't wearing them like they used to. I see so many bare heads in church.''

Hats, including the Easter bonnet, were a staple in the days when people dressed up every Sunday to go to church. Now, in a more casual society, fewer and fewer women bother with the tradition, making hats harder to find as many retail stores have eliminated their hat departments.

To make that task a little easier, the women at Centenary United Methodist Church in Akron sponsor a hat show on the first Sunday in March to help those who wear hats find an Easter bonnet. Walker has
always attended or been a model in the show, which is now in its 56th year.

''The goal is to have the show early enough to allow women time to choose the right hat for Easter,'' said Doloretta Lunda, who chaired this year's show at Tangier restaurant. ''It gives people a chance to order a particular hat in a different color than is being modeled, if they want. And a chance to talk to the milliner about the possibility of making or ordering a different kind of hat.''

Millinery shops, like The Hatterie Inc. on Buchholzer Road in Akron, count the Easter season as the time when there is the greatest demand for high-fashion, ornate ladies' hats. The nearly 100-year-old local business does a quarter of its yearly sales in ladies' hats during the spring and summer.

''The biggest blow to the ladies' hat industry was when the Catholic church no longer required women to cover their heads,'' said Dan Kelly, the third-generation owner of The Hatterie. ''Millions of women stopped wearing hats. I can remember heading to church with my family one Sunday and my sister forgot her hat. My mother worked feverishly to bobby-pin a napkin to the top of her head so the ushers would let her into the church.''

Church requirement

Mirroring the general practice of society, the wearing of hats by women in the Catholic church began to decline in the late 1960s and that trend continued into the 1970s and early 1980s. Vatican II, the ecumenical council that opened in 1962 and closed in 1965, gave local Catholic congregations and priests more freedom and that also likely played a role in the decline of hat wearing.

The requirement to wear a hat in church was formally changed in 1983, according to Robert Tayek, spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland.

''It appears that wearing a hat simply fell out of practice.'' Tayek said, ''and had everything to do with general convention.''

Women in other faith traditions followed the same cultural trend.

Susan Michelman, chairman of the department of merchandising, apparel and textiles at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, said hats became less popular in the 1960s and by the 1970s were practically gone in most churches.

''People don't dress up for church anymore,'' Michelman said. ''To wear a hat, you need the proper dress, shoes and bag. It goes with a whole ensemble that requires you to dress up.

''Churches used to have unwritten dress codes. Most churches aren't as strict about that anymore. Easter is a time when people may dress up, so there is more of a demand for the hat.''

Who wears them most?

The place where women can still be found wearing hats on any given Sunday is in predominantly African-American congregations, particularly those in the Pentecostal tradition.

Kelly and Kim Duren, the milliner who supplied the hats for the Centenary United Methodist Church style and hat show, said the majority of their high-fashion hat customers are African-American women.

Duren, of Gee's Hats in Warren, said 90 percent of her clientele are African-American women who attend services at Pentecostal churches.

''African-American women go all out,'' Duren said. ''The bigger and fancier the hat, the more attractive it is to them. Most of the orders I get are for hats with feathers, rhinestones, flowers and tall crowns.''

Paulette Walker, Vera Walker's daughter-in-law, is one of Duren's customers. Paulette Walker's husband, the Rev. Arthur Carven Walker, is the pastor of Unity Holiness Ministries Church of God in Christ. The Akron church is part of the Pentecostal movement.

Both Walker women said they find some of their hats during the denomination's annual Holy Convocation, where ''Saints Mall'' includes several hat vendors.

''I didn't wear hats to church until I married my husband (in 1971),'' said Paulette Walker, whose father was a pastor in a Baptist church. ''Now, I wear hats every Sunday.

''Women in the Church of God in Christ usually wear hats. The only time I don't wear a hat to church is on dress-down Sundays. But the younger women don't wear hats as often as the older women. It seems like hat wearing is becoming a lost art. It's kind of sad because I think women look beautiful in hats.''

The tradition of Christian women wearing hats is sometimes linked to biblical scripture found in 1 Corinthians 11:3-16 that refers to women covering their heads to honor their husbands. But the primary reason women wear hats is cultural, according to David W. Odell-Scott, coordinator of the religion studies program at Kent State University.

''Hat wearing has no relationship to the kind of expectation that you're marking a woman,'' Odell-Scott said. ''It is influenced by the culture at large. There is nothing religiously significant about wearing a hat. I think it's just fashion and a function of tradition.''

Women, like Vera Walker and Ernestine Hayes, who grew up in times when a hat sat atop the head of almost every women in church, wear hats every Sunday based on custom.

''I wear a hat because my mother wore a hat every Sunday,'' said Hayes, a parishioner at Centenary United Methodist Church. ''My mother always thought it was appropriate for little girls to wear hats, a dress and patent leather shoes to church, and she always made sure my sister and I wore hats.

''I think it's feminine, and it just makes your outfit complete.''