“Hey. Do you have time?” I would ask Mr. Wallace as I stopped by, usually at lunch time. “I have time if you have time," he'd say back. I sat just inside the door, on a metal and vinyl chair, he in his desk chair, and we talked. We talked and talked. He never doubted me, and I never doubted him. When I asked him to keep things in confidence, he did. When I asked him about life and teaching and what was going on in the school, he trusted me to do the same. He knew just how much of his stories to share, to encourage, enlighten and liberate—stoking my curiosity and cultivating growth.
We shared a love of old poems and sayings as guideposts for living. Some of my personal favorites of his were “You’ll never know until you try,” and “practice makes better.” And of course he knew the entirety of “Somebody said it couldn’t be done,” and recited it often, sometimes changing the last line, I felt just for me, …”until she did it.” He had the capacity to make a person feel like they were the most important person on earth, right then, whether we were ‘talking life,’ studying music theory or fixing a broken guitar. Mr. Wallace was not a jargoneer. “I’ll show you how to tighten this thingamabob connected to the whosamawhatsit, and then you’ll be able to do it.” There was no distance created because a young person like me might not know the terminology. We arrived at meaning together, and there was always plenty of time to learn.
Mr. Wallace read incredible books. Together we devoured the words of Ralph Ellison, Claude Brown Jr, Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, Audre Lorde and historian Lerone Bennett. Most of our conversations about the books were illustrated by Mr. Wallace’s own experiences and observations. Far from having a marginalized spirit, Mr. Wallace pointed out, “the light of the sun from the margins makes the world glow with the power of what’s possible.” He recalled the white lady who patted him on the head and told him he’d make a good chauffeur someday, and the difficulties of serving in a segregated Navy. He also shared that when his mom was cooking chitlin’s, he could smell it a block away. He’d go over to a friend’s house for supper. Once I went to hear Lerone Bennett speak at a luncheon at the university, and sat across from a young man who heaped a pile of chitlin’s onto his plate with great gusto. “You have to try these!” he said. "My Mom made them!" I must have looked even paler than a pale white kid from Connecticut in that moment, having internalized Mr. Wallace’s own dread of the guts. The young man helped me. “Here! You just put a lot of Tabasco on it.” When I told Mr. Wallace about it the next day, he laughed and laughed. “I’ll bet it was still offal!!” he said, starting a round of offal puns that lasted for days.
When I told Mr. Wallace I wanted to learn to play the guitar, he asked me what was the most beautiful piece of music I had ever heard. We started there. Mr. Wallace loved to teach because his teaching opened up possibilities for others to become who they truly are. He never saw his job as delivering content or prepping someone for tests--he was about liberating people’s minds from oppressive systems, not teaching them to be complicit. Mr. Wallace was way more jazz than classical, in that regard. He loved meeting his students where THEY were, and then following them through their lives and careers. He never missed my birthday or the chance to call me on Mother’s Day and thank me for being a Mom. Perhaps the most important lesson Mr. Wallace shared, by his example every day, was the one I tried to bring with me into my own teaching career—teaching is love. I was so fortunate to cross paths so early in my life with a man who filled the world with love. I miss him already, but his love and his stories, his music and his sayings will stay with me. I have time if you have time.
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