Being a writer has never meant that I can sit down and spin out 800 words on any given topic at the drop of a hat. Some of the things that I write are the result of days and hours of study, some come from the inspiration of a moment but built upon a foundation of years of bible study, and some are the result of glueing myself to my chair and pulling sentences, a word at a time, with considerable effort, from my brain.
Writing my dad’s obituary was definitely the latter. My heart was rather scrambled when it came time to write in a few paragraphs the summation of my father’s life. Suddenly I realized just how little I knew about him. I mean, I knew him, but the details of his education and career and what he did for a living for the majority of his life weren’t clear. Dates were slippery to catch, as the memories of those who still knew them were clouded by the grief of our loss. So here, given more time to reflect, is what I would rather have written. Even this is inadequate.
Bill Wallace was born in Birmingham, Alabama 84 years ago, the first child of his parents, Will and Jane. Joined a few years after by his baby sister LaRue, the family moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi and then Wichita Falls, Texas. I’ve found faded photographs of my dad wearing a cub scout uniform when he must have been around six years-old. Other photos show him with his sister in (what may be) their Easter morning outfits on the front steps of their home. There is ample photographic evidence of his early love of animals. He once found and domesticated a baby raccoon, named Bandit, which would perch itself on my Grandfather’s shoulder and delicately fish cigarettes from his shirt pocket. Later, as a teen, he tamed a young red-tailed hawk which would be waiting for him in the sky when he arrived home from school. When Dad got out of his car, he’d whistle, and the hawk would dive from above to land on Dad’s outstretched arm (protected by a glove, I assume!).
His love for animals meant that he was rarely without a dog and/or cats, and so I was raised always having pets. I remember when a sweet and frightened dog wandered into our front yard. We called Dad’s friend the vet, who came to our home to evaluate Penny’s health. This copper-colored border collie mix was terrified of men, but my Dad’s gentleness instantly won her over and he was the only man she’d allow to approach her. In later years, Dad had a series of cats, and his final feline friend was Sam, who moved with him from Wichita Falls when it was time for Dad to live closer to us four years ago. Sweet Sam made the move more tolerable for Dad.
My grandfather had a twin brother, Foster, who had two sons, Jim and Steve. Steve was born with physical disabilities due to an illness his mother suffered during her pregnancy which profoundly affected his hearing and eyesight. As a result, Steve wasn’t able to keep up with the crowd of young people his age. His whits were sharp, but he wore coke-bottle thick glasses and hearing aids and he walked funny. But my dad was always close to Steve. I’m told that they shared a room while at Louisiana Tech, which is the only reason Steve was able to go to college. Decades later, when I lived with my husband and children in Pennsylvania and then Florida, Dad would drive across the country to visit us, always stopping in Louisiana to pick Steve up and bring him along. As a result, my children were able to meet their cousin (first, twice removed?), who was the funniest and gentlest of men. Steve told the best stories about my dad in his childhood. I later realized what a testament these trips were to the kindness and love of my dad for his cousin. It was a rare glimpse into his heart.
Dad was a private person in many ways and guarded his heart carefully. And though he wouldn’t share the deepest parts of himself, he was generous in so many other ways. On his visits he’d always pick up the check and pay for the outings. When my children were going on mission trips and sending out their fundraising letters, Dad would mail them a check for the entire amount of their trip. His Christmas cards always included money for us and the kids. We never lived close enough for him to participate in their everyday lives, so Dad did what he could to show his love for them from a distance. As my kids grew, Dad was increasingly in awe of them. Rather an introvert himself, being in the same room with them could be overwhelming at times. With all five of our kids around the dinner table, the discussions are always interesting and often pretty animated. Always proud of them, in his later years Dad expressed to me how he felt intimidated at times by the combined force of their personalities and their topics of conversation.
That said, my dad was himself a brilliant man. Though he never officially finished his formal education, completing only a couple of years of college before dropping out, he was a specialist in his field of work. The description of what he did that I was given to put in his obituary read that he, “designed and made drawings to build custom material handling equipment including industrial belt conveyors, bucket elevators, and screw conveyors for Fortune 500 companies.” Beginning as a draftsman in 1970 with his father’s company, Wallace Manufacturing, and retiring as the managing engineer of B. W. Sinclair in 2019, my dad designed systems for factories around the world which manufacture products ranging from peanut butter to heavy ore, cement to pet food. I was told that his particular specialty was re-designing conveyor systems to fit within a factory’s existing space, thus saving a client from extra construction costs. Dad loved his work. I’m also told that he designed the conveyor system in the factory where the Marshmallow Peeps are made, so if you’ve had those sugar crunchy, marshmallow smooshy confections, you have enjoyed the fruit of Bill Wallace’s labors.
Besides loving his work, Dad also loved his play. When asked what activities he enjoyed, it’s easier to list those he didn’t. Dad golfed, skied, sailed, played tennis, bowled, fished, was a jigsaw puzzler, earned his pilot’s license and flew small aircraft, and rode his bike in the ‘Hotter ‘n Hell Hundred’ in Wichita Falls (which, taking place in August, was often hotter than hell). Once while rigging a sailboat for a regatta on a lake near Fort Worth and continuing working while all his friends stepped away for lunch, he heard someone come aboard the boat, exclaiming that he recognized it as formerly belonging to a friend. Dad looked up to see Ted Turner standing there. Ted offered to lend a hand, and together they set the lines and sails ready. Only moments after Ted left, Dad’s friends returned to an unbelievable story. I found photos in one of Dad’s old albums that corroborate the story. Another time, sailing in a race on Lake Arrowhead, Dad pulled aside to rescue a fellow sailor whose boat had foundered on a shoal of rocks. Together they won the race. My dad made friends everywhere he went.
Dad’s baby sister LaRue (my Auntie Dear) and her husband, my uncle Graham, started traveling the world in the early 2000’s, and one morning LaRue called Dad to ask if he had a passport. He didn’t, but he would need one to go with them to Scotland! Being a Wallace, my dad had known about Sir William Wallace long before Mel Gibson had heard of him, so after giving it some thought, he jumped at the opportunity to visit Scotland. After that first trip, Dad joined LaRue and Graham for many others, as well as traveling with his dear friends David and Gail. Since the 1970’s he had gone yearly to Utah on skiing trips with friends, but overseas travel literally opened the world to him. An avid photographer, Dad took zillions of photos and printed them all—in doubles and triples. His stacks of photo albums are filled with the memories of his trips, which he enjoyed sharing with everyone. After dementia took most of his memories, the places he’d visited happily endured, even if in a confused manner. In the last year of his life, his career conflated in his mind with his tour of the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam in China, and he was convinced that he’d designed and built that project with his own hands. That muddled memory brought him so much pride and joy that we always agreed with him that, yes, it was an impressive feat and we were so proud of him.
Dementia is cruel, but God is kind. When Dad’s mind started slipping in 2021, we made a few trips across Texas to visit and check on him. Finally, at the beginning of 2022 he was ready to move closer to us. We found a facility nearby that included independent and assisted living as well as memory care. He moved into an independent apartment with his beloved Sam and was able to make that work for a little more than a year. Then we brought in some home care aides who would help him keep to his schedule, get him to meals on time, and protect him against the effects of his “sundowning” each night. Once it was evident that he needed round the clock care he moved to the memory care section. It took months for him to adjust to living within the confines meant to guard against the residents’ wandering. But once he settled (sadly, by losing more of his memory), the kindness of the caregivers won him over. I stopped hearing him complain about wanting to go back home to Wichita Falls and started hearing that he loved the people there. The director would take several residents at a time on field trips to a local zoo, to the movies, or out to lunch. Dad started waiting for her to arrive each morning and would greet her with a hug, saying, “I missed you!” They had worship services on Sunday mornings, bible studies during the week, dance parties for any and no reason at all, and celebrated every holiday, no matter how obscure. Jim and I tried to get him out as often as we could to get a haircut, go see a movie, to come to our home to just watch a show or join us for a meal, and of course, for various doctor’s appointments. Our youngest son picked him up to go see the latest action movie a few times. Dad loved action movies.
In the early hours of September 26th, Dad fell out of bed and broke his hip. He was taken by ambulance to the Emergency Room, tested and scanned until they definitively saw the break, and scheduled for surgery. My brother and his wife came down from Wichita Falls to see him. After the surgery he rested for a day in his hospital room before attempting physical therapy the next day. Once the therapist arrived, it quickly became evident that Dad wouldn’t be able to cooperate with the rigors of learning to stand and walk again. He didn’t understand what had happened and was in so much pain that he couldn’t follow the directions through the fight or flight response triggered in his system. And so, we realized that the best and kindest thing we could do would be to keep him comfortable. He returned to his memory care unit under the care of a wonderful hospice team, and for two weeks they and the memory caregivers did their best to manage his pain and care for his healing surgical wound. Then one morning the hospice nurse called to tell me he was transitioning. We called family and assumed we’d have a few days to say goodbye. Our oldest son, his wife, and their son came that evening. After they left, I sat with him until late that night. The next morning when I got to his bedside his breathing was more labored, with long pauses between. The caretaker who was with me went to find a box of tissues, and moments later his breathing stopped. I tried in vain to find a pulse. Just like that, with one final exhale of breath, he was gone. The final day written for him had come, and the Lord called him away to rest awhile.
My dad was always very private about whatever faith he had. Raised in the Episcopal Church, which transitioned to Anglican years ago, his Baptist sister and Presbyterian daughter were never able to engage him in conversations about where he stood with Jesus. But he sat in church every Sunday morning and confessed his sins and the Lordship of Christ in the prayers he’d memorized through a lifetime of repetition. Over a year ago, my husband asked him straight out if he believed that Jesus was Lord and had he believed in him for salvation. Daddy answered with an emphatic “Yes.” I can only surmise that the disease which erased his memories must have also, by God’s grace, removed his resistance to the Spirit’s work, or at least lowered his inhibitions to expressing what was in his heart. During one of his more lucid moments in the hospital I saw tears running from his eyes and leaned in to hear what he was trying to say. “So good to me, . . . so good to me. . .” “Yes, Daddy, so many people love you and have been so good to you,” I replied. “And God has been so go good to you too.” He nodded his head in agreement.
The Lord gently took my dear Daddy before he suffered any more pain. And he mercifully took him before he forgot me. I don’t know for certain, but I do hope and trust that there was at least a mustard seed of faith planted in his heart. So, I’m praying, in the poetic words of Douglas McKelvey:
In the end, whatever redemption you have ordained and accomplished will be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So let us rest our hearts in the solace of that mystery, even as we rightly weep and grieve what might have been but never was, and what was but is no more.
This we can rest in: Your love. This we can rest in: Your mercy. This we can rest in: Your promise, O God, to restore, to redeem, to make all things new.
Amen.[1]
[1] Douglas McKelvey, Every Moment Holy, Vol. II; Death, Grief, and Hope (Rabbit Room Press: Nashville, TN, 2021), 187
