Mary Sybil Dial Wallace was born on a farming community in Walton County, but she aspired to rise above her humble beginnings.
"She always thought she was going to be a movie star," said her son, Philip Robert Wallace, 61, of Florida. And she was...in a way. Not only did Mrs. Wallace earn a part in the locally filmed 1985 movie, "The Slugger's Wife," but the deeply rooted Georgian was also the star of her own charmed life.
"She was sassy, glamorous and flirty," said her daughter, Vicki Wallace Blandford, 66, of Atlanta. "She was a truly gracious Southern lady."
Mrs. Wallace, 92, died Friday at St. Joseph's Hospital. Though macular degeneration had long ago taken away her sight, heart complications claimed her life, said her children.
It was a life well-lived, beginning with her renown in the Loganville area for her skills on the basketball court. "She had a very good two handed set shot," said Philip Wallace, describing the way his mother would stand far from the basket, place both hands behind the ball and shoot. Her finely tuned soprano always helped her earn the lead role in high school theater productions when such programs made it to her rural high school.
The multi-talented Mrs. Wallace would soon capture the attention of Egbert E. Wallace, who had arrived from his native Oakwood to serve as principal at Loganville High School. In 1941, the two married, and with her new husband, a Naval officer serving in World War II, Mrs. Wallace embarked on a military life that would take her from Georgia to San Francisco, and many points in between.
At the war's end, the Wallace family returned to their home state to raise their two children. As a stay-at-home mom, Wallace shuttled her children to and from activities while continuing to indulge her artistic passions through floral design and landscaping. Dried flower arrangements and a garden showcasing jonquils, hydrangeas and camellias were among her specialties.
In the 1970's, Mrs. Wallace and her husband rediscovered their wanderlust by founding an international travel agency. They arranged tours that would take hundreds of locals to destinations including Hawaii, Las Vegas and the Holy Land. With Mrs. Wallace serving as guide for many of the adventures, the tours became quite popular, particularly the Vegas trips where attendees would clamor to get the best seating at Elvis Presley shows.
One memorable tour to Jerusalem involved former Gov. Lester Maddox demonstrating his bike riding prowess to Israelis by riding his bicycle backward down a set of stairs. The story was widely reported at the time, and Mrs. Wallace thought it was some of the best free advertising they could get, her son said.
Mrs. Wallace's husband died in 1997. She had begun to experience some health challenges. Her sight declined and soon she would battle a broken hip and a decade later, a fracture. But through it all she maintained her sense of glamour, putting her hair in pin curls each night. In the mornings, she would rise to a breakfast of bacon and eggs accompanied by black coffee and conversation served up by her son whenever he was in town.
In her final moments, he said, Mrs. Wallace, grandmother of four and great-grandmother to four more, seemed to have made peace with what was to come. During one of their last visits, Mrs. Wallace stretched her arm up to the sky.
"I asked her, ‘What are you reaching for?'" Mr. Wallace said. "And she said, ‘I'm trying to touch an angel.'"
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