Currently I have a site where I have setup to login protect the entire site via setting the access on the public_html folder.

WHAT I'D LIKE TO DO:
Within the site I would like to have several pages that will be accessible without login. With the exception of these special, publicly accessible pages, I want to protect the rest of the site so that once logged in, a person has access to all pages WITHOUT having to login individually for every page.

I removed the login requirement for a particular page via the WAM: I found the file I want to be public, selected it and then UNCHECKED the box that indicates protected access.

This doesn't seem to work. Is this possible with WAM and if it is, how do I do this?

What you need to do there is instead of protecting the public_html folder, you just protect the index.html file itself. That will leave the other pages unprotected.

Scott...I know this. What I would like to know is: can I protect some of my pages (20+) while having some not protected (6), but not requiring the user to log into each protected page individually, which is quite annoying?

That is the way WAM should work now. If the user(s) have access to any of those 20 pages, they are only required to authenticate once. You can make your browser also remember your credentials so that you don't have to re-enter them again.