Services were held December 30 at Slininger-Schroeder Funeral Home in Jefferson for Wallace Teagarden, 98, of Ames.
Pastor Jerry Evelsizer offered words of comfort. Interment was at Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Grant Township, Greene County.
Wallace W. Teagarden, son of Ralph W. and Bessie (McCuen) Teagarden, was born Feb. 5, 1923, in Grand Junction, where he graduated in 1941. He graduated from Iowa State University in 1945 with a degree in engineering. He was then employed by Lockheed of Burbank, CA, working with metallurgy to improve the wing strength of the P-38.
Wallace returned to Iowa and in 1948 got his law degree from the University of Iowa. He settled in Ames where he practiced law and was an insurance adjuster.
Wallace became involved in the founding of the Pleasant Hill Church Homecoming, a small church that served the farming area where his father Ralph had lived as a boy. Though the church had been closed for some years, a Memorial Day Sunday Homecoming was begun which included a patriotic memorial service at the cemetery adjacent to the church. Since 1960, as part of that Memorial Day service, Wallace recited Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address from memory, adding excerpts from other founding documents of our nation. For almost 60 years his oration boomed out, until 2019, still from memory, as strong as ever, but for the last time.
Wallace enjoyed goose hunting, and in the 1970s flying his Cessna 182. He also initiated the Thomas Jefferson Gardens in Jefferson, providing the statue of Jefferson. There you will see a plaque about him with these words: “In 2010, Wallace W. Teagarden, a longtime admirer of Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy, desired to honor Jefferson by erecting a statue of him on the Greene County Court House lawn… He wished to combine his love of agriculture and Greene County in a lasting legacy that also hails the author of the Declaration of Independence and the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase. The Thomas Jefferson Gardens of Greene County were created by a group headed by local attorney Thomas W. Polking to more fully honor Jefferson’s interests and spirit. As the focal point of the garden, the statue of Jefferson, in keeping with his regard for the common man, welcomes visitors as Teagarden envisioned.”
His most recent project was giving a matching grant to address a shortfall of $150,000 and make possible the new animal shelter in Jefferson which will be finished in the fall of 2022.
Wallace passed on Dec. 22, 2021. He was preceded in death by his parents and siblings: Wilbur and his wife Gladys, Marjorie and her husband Claire Robson, and Betty and her husband Bill Reinhardt.
