Updated Thursday, Nov 29, 2007

Sharp pencil, quick wit save Wallace's life

By Norman Jameson

BR Editor

Knowing how to complete a minister's tax return just might have saved Jerry Wallace's life.

In his first two weeks as a scholarship football player at East Carolina University, Wallace, "met two men bigger and better than I was and I didn't think I had a very safe future."

For Wallace, and others like him who grew up in poor circumstances in small textile towns like Rockingham, athletics was the only way out. But a few days of contact drills proved Wallace a quick learner and convinced him there might be a better way to finance his education.

Today Wallace is president of Campbell University and has been associated with the school as a teacher or administrator since 1975.

Giving up football was "not easy." He had just $150 to his name, but hungry wins every time and Wallace remembered a man in Rockingham who prospered doing taxes. Wallace bought a tax preparer's book with "the best dollar I ever invested" and went into the business of preparing income tax returns.

A proud "lint head" Wallace had access to shift workers at the local plant in Rockingham where his dad ran the company store and his mother worked in the cloth room. He went home on Fridays, gathered information from the third shift mill workers, received people all day Saturday, then went back to Greenville for classes and to prepare the returns.

Two weeks later he returned the prepared documents and collected $5 for each. He supported himself in college and seminary that way, and "did very well."

He still does his own taxes and thinks he would have liked being an accountant. His tax help given to classmates in seminary earned him the nickname "10/40."

Wallace's football passion continues and is a contributing factor to Campbell fielding a team in 2008, after more than 50 years' absence. Until about 1940 Campbell was very competitive in football and once won the national junior college championship.

Students wanted a football team and Wallace said, "How do you have a real homecoming at college without a football game?"

Wallace was a Rockingham high school standout admired by an elementary school kid named Jerry McGee, current president of Wingate University.

Both were actively involved in local churches, Wallace at Cobb Memorial, which, "informed me about the good things of life and inspired me to the better things of life," he said. "The church is still ministering in the midst of hard times with people who are really have a tough time making a life. But they are very faithful."

College experience

Wallace became "a former football player" and an English scholar at East Carolina. He earned admission to Wake Forest law school, but his heart led him instead to the new school in the town of Wake Forest - Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. There he earned bachelor of divinity and master of theology degrees.

While a student, he was pastor of Morvin Baptist Church. When he graduated in 1960, he went to Elizabethtown Baptist Church.

Wallace's countenance changes even today when remembering his 15 years' service at Elizabethtown, calling it one of the highlights of his career.

Since his emphasis for his theology degree was in the sociology of religions, Wallace was a prime candidate for Campbell University's president, Norman Wiggins, to tap for the sociology department. But Wallace's heart was still in the pastorate, so he drove 70 miles each way once a week for five years to teach at Campbell, while he worked toward a doctorate in higher education administration from North Carolina State University.

In 1975 he joined the Campbell faculty fulltime and in 1981 became dean of the college. In 1984 he added the titles of vice president for academic affairs and provost.

Those were phenomenal growth years for Campbell and Wallace is forever grateful that Wiggins' invitation to join him in the work.

Wallace was ever present with Wiggins as they moved Campbell College to university status with five professional schools, and started an international campus in Asia. While Wallace for almost three decades was Wiggins' right hand and today is Wiggins' chief admirer, he is no clone of the high profile ex-Marine and lawyer who led Campbell 36 years and died Aug. 1.

Wallace stepped out of administration and went back into the classroom in 2001, having "a glorious experience" teaching in Campbell Divinity School.

"I read books, read journal articles, had great fellowship with faculty, and even was able to complain about the administration," he said.

When Wiggins fell ill, he served a semester as assistant to the president. Trustees asked him to take over the role of president on May 29, 2003. Wallace, 72, plans to continue in office long enough "to complete the work."

As far as bricks and mortar define "the work," it may never be complete. Over five years Campbell is spending $90 million on construction, including the $30 million John W. Pope Jr. Convocation Center, which is the most expensive project ever in Harnett County. Other new projects have been a pharmacy classroom building, apartment complex, chapel, football stadium, food service area and landscaping.

Has Wallace changed stripes and become a profligate spender?

No. It's just that his early career was at point for building academic programs. While dean, provost and vice president, Campbell added schools for law, business, education, pharmacy, divinity and reorganized the arts and sciences. He needed to staff those schools, choose deans and faculty and gain accreditations,

"We were building strong academic programs for 35-40 years," he said. "What was delayed and lacking was the facilities to complement it."

Simmering pot

Wallace found himself at the fore when 50 years of simmering conflict with the Baptist State Convention over money and governance culminated in a proposal approved by messengers to the Baptist State Convention in November. If approved on second reading next year, the five North Carolina Baptist schools will be free to select their own trustees and they will give up Cooperative Program funding.

Wallace's stature among his peers, although he has been a president less time than any of them, was evident as he was sole spokesman for the schools during debate.

"I've had trustees that have just done great things and I look forward to that tradition continuing," he said before the annual session. "Where we have been lacking has been our ability to have fine leadership of Campbell alumni, outstanding church people, who are not Baptist. They need to be included on the board of trustees because of who they are, their expertise, their wisdom, their resources. To move Campbell to (become) the school it deserves to be, and this Convention needs it to be, we have to have trustees with the resources to make it happen."

Asked if he could not find those trustees strictly from among North Carolina Baptists, Wallace said, "No, I can't."

Wallace insists Campbell will be every bit as Christian and Baptist in the new relationship with North Carolina Baptists as in the old, because there remains, "a deep love and respect for the churches of North Carolina; an openness to use our resources, and whatever expertise we might have to help those churches fulfill their mission."

"We will reach out to those churches, to recruit students, to meet and be present at sacred assemblies such as the Baptist State Convention and to affirm the work of the Convention in the good things that it does," he said. "In other words we will do the same things we've been doing for 120 years. Why would Campbell want or need to change?"

Wallace said he hopes North Carolina Baptists will continue to affirm Campbell "and love it."

Happy youth

Wallace met Betty, his wife since 1956, in health class at East Carolina. He normally sat near the back, but moved closer to a pretty girl near the front. Unfortunately, the professor caught him unprepared one day with no book.

As he squirmed, someone whispered, "take my book."

"I turned around, took a look and said, 'Where in the world did you come from?'" Their first date was the ECU and N.C. State freshmen football game.

They have three children, Betty Lynne, McLain, and Kelly.

His own sibling group included two "wonderful" older brothers, among whom "never a lick was thrown," he said.

Still an avid football fan, he names Campbell as his favorite team. He likes to walk the golf course in early morning, but his primary sports equipment beyond that is a remote control.

Architect of a magnificent funeral service for Wiggins in August, Wallace said he simply hopes it can be said of him at his own funeral, "He was faithful to his calling."