At Random: Wallace Greene

By Jessica Pope

August 03, 2008 11:14 pm

— Play the ball as it lies, play the course as you find it, and if you can’t do either, do what is fair. But to do what is fair, you need to know the rules of golf. — Rules of Golf.

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Reporter’s Note: Much like the characters in those Lemony Snicket books, Wallace Greene has experienced a series of unfortunate events. Of course, his are not works of fiction and do not center around children growing up through terrible things. Wallace Greene’s series of unfortunate events began three years ago when he was enjoying his most favorite diversion — golf. The underlying principle of the Rules of Golf may be fairness, but I cannot imagine anyone using the word “fair” to describe Wallace Greene’s life, or, at the very least, not the last three years of it. On the flipside, I cannot imagine Wallace Greene uttering a single complaint about life’s ups and downs.
He is someone who believes that everything happens for a reason — even though that reason might be clear as mud initially. Like so many of you reading this, I first “met” Wallace Greene while relaxing in front of the television set in the comfort of my bedroom. He’s the “star” of one of the South Georgia Medical Center Dasher Memorial Heart Center commercials and may best be known for the following: “My wife and I have been married for 50 years. We are very involved in our church. She plans the trips, and I drive the bus.” Like me, you’ve probably seen the commercials, print advertisements, and billboards. Something about Wallace Greene — I have no idea what — piqued my curiosity. Call it intuition. Call it dumb luck. Something told me he had a story to tell.

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Wallace Greene, 69, was at the Augusta National Golf Club when Tiger Woods defeated, in a sudden death playoff, Chris DiMarco to win a fourth green jacket at the 2005 Masters Golf Tournament. It’s a moment he will not soon forget — even though he never made it to the sideline viewing area like the other spectators, even though he missed what has since been described as one of the best moments in golf history.
“As soon as I entered (the Augusta National Golf Club), I looked at my wife

and said, ‘I’m sick.’ I was stuck up by the snack bar area all day,” he said. “I just laid there with my head in my wife’s lap, and I heard the cheers when Tiger won.”
Wallace and his wife, Wanda Greene, 68, thought that maybe he had a touch of food poisoning or a stomach virus. His symptoms, after all, seemed to have come on all of a sudden. They did not really suspect his condition might be something serious.
“I felt so bad for him,” Wanda added. “We had to wait until the whole thing was over with before we could go home. We could not get in touch with the friends we had traveled (to the Augusta National Golf Club) with. They do not allow you to have cell phones, so all we could do was sit and wait.”
When Wallace finally made it back home later on that evening, he went straight to bed, believing he would wake up the next morning feeling refreshed and well. When that did not happen, he decided to pay an impromptu visit to his doctor’s office.
Wallace was immediately hospitalized for 10 days at South Georgia Medical Center for sepsis. He was told that the severe infection was due to a problem with the extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy — a procedure that uses shock waves to break a kidney stone into small pieces that can travel through the urinary tract and pass from the body more easily — he had undergone earlier. (His involved the use of a stent to hold the ureter open as his stone was rather large.)
This infection marked the beginning of Wallace’s series of unfortunate events.
One year later, the week of the 2006 Masters Golf Tournament, Wallace was in Reidsville teaching a 40-hour Georgia insurance licensure course when he started experiencing chest pains. He took an aspirin, which dulled the pain. Two of his students drove him the 130-plus miles back to Valdosta.
“I started feeling better and thought everything was going to be OK,” he said. “I thought I needed a little rest, but my wife took me to the hospital. At the (Dasher Memorial) Heart Center, doctors ran a few tests and discovered I was definitely having a heart attack.”
“He was scheduled for triple bypass surgery the very next day,” Wanda added.
Although he had four tickets, Wallace missed the Masters Golf Tournament once again.
Wallace and Wanda were relieved when the week of the 2007 Masters Golf Tournament came and went without incident. They hoped that it signaled the end of his series of unfortunate events. A year later, however, they learned that it had not.
The week of the 2008 Masters Golf Tournament, Wallace was again plagued by chest pains. He went back to South Georgia Medical Center, believing he was having another heart attack. Dasher Memorial Heart Center doctors ran several tests, including a cardiac catheterization, and eventually concluded that his heart was fine. That was the good news.
The bad news ... Wallace’s pain was coming from his esophagus. It needed stretching.
“I had to give up the Masters (Golf Tournament) because it was not good for my health,” he shared with a laugh. “From this point on, I think I will just watch it on the television.”
Wallace no longer plays golf either. Giving it up was not easy, especially considering he has lived just off Country Club Road and has enjoyed a view of the Valdosta Country Club golf course from his backyard for 30 years.
“I stopped playing golf three years ago after that kidney stone procedure,” he added. “And I have not played since. My golf clubs are put away. I used to miss it, but I simply don’t have the desire anymore. I think God took it away. I think he had other plans for me.”
“He was a golf addict. He loved the game,” Wanda shared. “He was known to spend the entire day on the golf course, playing several times a day. When our nephew, Joel Bius, who’s now in the Air Force, would visit, the two of them would play until they could not see the ball anymore.”
Wallace, along with Wanda, now devotes his free time to the Joy Makers, a ministry for seniors who attend Northside Baptist Church. In addition to a Bible study, this group likes to travel and recently spent the day in Colquitt enjoying a performance of Swamp Gravy. (Remember the commercial? “My wife plans the trips, and I drive the bus.”)
“We travel to several places every year,” Wanda said. “We go wherever we decide we want to go.”
Wallace was born Aug. 21, 1938, in Quitman and moved to Moultrie at the young age of 3. Born Oct. 21, 1939, Wanda grew up in nearby Sigsbee.
The two met at the skating rink in her hometown.
Wallace was a senior at the former Moultrie High School. Wanda was a senior at the former Doerun High School.
“He used to come over with some of his friends,” Wanda reminisced with a smile. “We used to skate to Johnny Cash’s ‘I Walk the Line.’ We were good.”
“I guess you could say that us Moultrie boys liked those Doerun girls,” Wallace added with a grin.
Wallace and Wanda graduated from high school in June of 1957 and married in September after he finished United States Coast Guard boot camp.
“She and I came from really similar backgrounds. We both came from families that didn’t have much ... but we did not know it at the time because they were so full of love,” he said.
Wallace must have really loved Wanda. He asked her to marry him knowing she was one of the girls who “blew up” Doerun High School.
“Now that’s a funny story,” Wanda noted. “There were 27 students in my home economics class, and we were making chicken salad sandwiches for the basketball game that night. Basketball was the big thing at our school back then. I cannot remember if the teacher fell asleep or just was not paying us much attention, but we shoved too many chickens into the pressure cooker, and it exploded. Chicken went everywhere ... the lid to the pressure cooker went out through the window and across the street and into the elementary school. When that school was torn down years later, there was still chicken in the ceiling.”
Wallace, who teaches insurance licensure courses, likes to share that story with his students.
Stationed at Staten Island, N.Y., on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Campbell, Wallace and Wanda made their first home together in an old home split into two apartments. They lived upstairs and shared a bathroom with the people downstairs. She worked as a “checker” at various grocery stores, and every other month, while at sea, he launched weather balloons.
“We were just a ferry ride from Manhattan,” said Wanda. “Because of the military, we could get free tickets to all sorts of sporting events, concerts, and Broadway shows. We saw Buddy Holly ... Jerry Lee Lewis ... went to Yankee Stadium ...”
“We definitely took advantage of life in the Coast Guard,” Wallace added.
Wallace was eventually transferred to a U.S. Coast Guard patrol boat at Fire Island, N.Y. As a result of the transfer, he and Wanda moved to nearby Bay Shore. On June 24, 1961, he retired from the Coast Guard. (His and Wanda’s oldest daughter, Wendy, was born in January of 1961. She was delivered in Moultrie for a charge of $25 because Wallace “did not want her to be a Yankee.” If she had been born in New York, her birth would have been free.)
Wallace and Wanda lived in Macon from 1961 to 1964. He worked as a civil service air mechanic at nearby Robins Air Force Base. He was called back to service during the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April of 1961 but never deployed.
“We were fortunate that he did not have to go in the end,” Wanda said. “Besides, he did not have a single uniform left ... nothing but a hat. His sister had cut them up and made clothes for her kids.”
In 1964, Wallace and Wanda moved to Fitzgerald. Following in the footsteps of family members, he went to work for Prudential Insurance Company of America as a salesman. (His and Wanda’s youngest daughter, Tracy, was born in June of 1965.) Some six years later, he was promoted to a management position and relocated to Valdosta.
“We just fell in love with Valdosta,” Wallace said. “It was close to our hometowns. We made our first home on Oak Street Extension.”
Wallace and Wanda moved into their home off of Country Club Road in 1978, and, before long, both their daughters had graduated from Lowndes High School. (Wallace retired from Prudential Insurance Company of America in 1994 but finds the time to teach the 40-hour Georgia insurance certification course once every six weeks or so.) He and Wanda enjoy spending all their time together, helping out others through their church, and with friends and family. (They currently have five granddaughters, one grandson, and two great-granddaughters.)
“I’ve been married to the same lady for nearly 51 years, and I’m still in love with her,” Wallace said.
“We are still on our honeymoon,” Wanda chimed in. “We make each other laugh, and we finish each other’s sentences. We still hold hands.”
“That might be necessary at our age,” Wallace added with a grin. “We need to hold hands to hold each other up.”

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