Jim Wallace, a theater and performance studies major and $250,000 donor to its department, is not the man you’d expect him to be. He’s not gregarious, or loud, and he does not speak with exaggerated hand gestures or a booming voice. He sits there, fairly still and somewhat quiet with an all-the-rarer friendly smile.
A 77-year-old retired IBM executive, Wallace has been taking classes in Kennesaw State’s theater department for 15 years. He’s here because he wants to be, and his reasoning, as he puts it, is because “sitting around and waiting to die is very boring.”
“I’ve been here almost 15 years… because I’m in no rush to get out,” Wallace said. “The first time I got a degree, it was to get a degree. This time it’s to get an education.”
Dressed in blue jeans, a red, buttoned-up plaid shirt, flip-flops and a khaki jacket — it’s a cool, comfortable style that paints a man who, while not unconcerned, does not think of life as too gravely serious a thing.
It started about 15 years ago when, through a friendship with Joe Meeks, former dean of the college of the arts, Wallace got the idea to try an acting class.
Wallace recalled his first day: “I was the first one sitting in the acting class, Acting One, and as the students walked in the door, they were like, ‘Woah, what are you doing here?’ It was the kind of diversity that the students weren’t used to, but about three weeks into the class, and it’s been true ever since, the kids just accept me, you know? I’m one of them.”
What he does seem to take seriously is the world around him — more pointedly, the people. Wallace has an eye for injustice that focuses on the divide in the U.S. between whites and minorities, particularly the black community.
Wallace is no stranger to racism. He was raised in a racist community in Oregon, and his college fraternity excluded black people — but what separates Wallace is his outlook.
“I was in the military when Truman integrated the military, and I worked for a black major, and for some reason, that guy took me under his wing and he liked me,” Wallace said. “And then I joined IBM, and IBM was in the forefront of equal employment opportunity. And I was going out and I was hiring people of color.”
Wallace said he found great satisfaction in theater department chairman Rick Lombardo’s decision to cast black actors in the lead roles of “As You Like It,“ a recent KSU theater performance that Wallace partook in.
In talking with Wallace, it quickly becomes clear that this life, the life of a theater student that began at the age of 62, is the one he always wanted to lead. He attributes his career at IBM for his ability to do this.
“There is true joy in giving,” Wallace said.
When asked about his hope for the future of the department, given his time, emotional and financial investment in it, he jokingly said, “We’re doing fine.”
When asked how he thinks students today differ from him when he was their age, Wallace’s initial response was to jokingly reach for the cellphone recording the interview and then laugh.
“The kids are the same,” He said. “They get stuck in these things, [cellphones] but they’re the same.”
While weighing in on his relationship with the students, he said: “You know what our [the older generation’s] job is? Our job is to keep you alive until you’re 25 because we’re very stupid until we get to the age of 25.
“A lot of people say we write off old folks and I’m wondering whether old folks write off themselves, by disengaging or somehow feeling, ‘Well I don’t have anything to contribute anymore,’” Wallace continued. “We have a lot to contribute. And I do not feel rejected by the students. I don’t. They’re glad to have me in the classroom.”
Wallace fell in love with performance as an eight-year-old kid in his church’s Christmas production, when he walked out, realized he had forgotten his prop sword, announced to the audience what he had done, and walked back to get it.
He’s still the same funny, honest kid today.
