There are not too many people alive who can say they have voted in 19 presidential elections, starting with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But Tyrone’s Lamar Wallace can.
And while he’s at it he can fill you in on enough history to fill a textbook. Having turned 100 years old on Nov. 28, Wallace was the center of attention at a large celebration in his honor held Nov. 26 at Hopewell United Methodist Church.
The crowd of well-wishers poured into the meeting room at Hopewell at 3 p.m. to make sure the birthday boy had a proper party. And that he did, with Wallace filling in a few of the details of his life while welcoming the room that quickly became crowded with guests.
Anybody who has lived as long as Lamar Wallace can usually be counted to tell us how we might do the same. And for Wallace it was pretty simple.
“Live life every day and do everything in moderation,” Wallace said with a smile. “If you do that you’ll survive much longer and have a happier life.”
Asked about the significant changes he has witnessed during the past century, Wallace said the greatest and best change has been in medical care.
“Especially since World War II, we have the solutions to so many things except cancer,” Wallace said.
Another major change of note, and one that many people his junior might not well remember, deals with transportation. For Wallace it’s not the radical changes in the types of vehicles but something more basic — the nearly ubiquitous and decades-long presence of bumpy dirt roads. He chuckled when mentioning that people today scarcely think about jumping in the car and breezing over to another state in a matter of an hour or two. Today is a far cry from the road conditions that took hours to travel less than 100 miles “back in the day.”
So just who is this man who has lived in Tyrone’s Lake Windsong subdivision for nearly two decades?
Lamar Ernest Wallace was born Nov. 28, 1911, in Romulus, Oklahoma. He was the first child of Ernest P. and Lucille B. Wallace. He had two sisters, Evelyn Louise and Oleta Eilene. His family moved to Gotebo, Oklahoma, in Kiowa County in 1925 where Lamar finished high school in 1931. He entered the University of Oklahoma and despite the Great Depression managed to graduate in January 1937. He worked for the Tulsa Tribune in newspaper circulation until 1941, said son-in-law Charlie Philips.
Philips said Wallace entered the U.S. Army in February of 1941 before the United States entered World War II, and in July 1942 he was enrolled in Officer Candidate School at Fort Warren, Wyoming. After graduation he was sent to Fort Lewis, Washington where as a first lieutenant he commanded the quartermaster section of some 500 men. After 20 months he returned to Ft. Warren where he was placed in command of the 4416th Quartermaster Company.
Wallace commanded the 4416th in Europe from December 1944 until July 1945. After that, his company was sent to the Pacific where he remembers hearing of Japan’s surrender while passing through the Panama Canal on the way to the Philippines.
“After being discharged from the Army in January 1946, Lamar returned to Tulsa where he built a house and continued working for the Tulsa World in newspaper circulation. After that, he became a real estate broker and worked in Westport, Oklahoma until he retired in 1979,” Philips said. “He married Helen Ward of Tulsa, Oklahoma in June 1941, and the couple lived in Tulsa and Westport until Helen’s death in 1976. On a trip to Israel in 1977, he met Mary Louise Decker, a widow from Atlanta, Georgia. In January 1978, the couple were married and settled back in Westport. He and Mary moved to Valdosta, Georgia, in 1979 and relocated to Tyrone in 1992. Mary passed away in January of 2010 after 32 years of marriage.”
Philips explained that when Wallace was born William Howard Taft was President of the United States and the old men in his town were veterans of the Civil War or the Great Plains Indian Wars. He has voted in 19 presidential elections, first casting a ballot for Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.
When Wallace was born the United States had a population of 110 million, most Americans lived in small towns with populations under 2,500, the automobile was still in its infancy and most highways were still dirt or gravel roads.
“In good health, his living memory goes back to the last days of the old American West, World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Stock Market Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the Second World War, the post-war boom and at least six major recessions. A sign on his desk humorously states, ‘I’ve survived just about everything!’” Philips remarked with a smile of his own.
