John LeRoy "Red" Wallace: Texas Politician (1914–2010)

John (or Johnnie) LeRoy “Red” Wallace, state legislator, was born on August 18, 1914, in Ranger, Eastland County, Texas, to Carra Lucy (Short) Wallace and James Lawrence Wallace, Sr. His father was a pharmacist, and his mother was a homemaker. He was the second of four children, two boys and two girls. The family moved several times within Texas during Wallace’s younger years before settling in Fort Worth. There, Wallace attended Central High School, where he met Elsie Jane Boucher. The two were married on June 18, 1938. The couple made their home in McAllister, Oklahoma.

In Oklahoma Wallace worked for the Curtiss Candy Company, which created Baby Ruth and Butterfinger candy bars, before he served overseas in the U.S. Army during World War II. Jane Wallace moved back to Fort Worth during her husband’s military service. After returning from war, John Wallace rejoined his wife in Fort Worth. There, he worked at a department store.

In 1946, at the age of thirty-one, Wallace announced he would run for state representative for District 101, Place 4, representing Tarrant County. He and his wife spoke on behalf of his candidacy in radio advertisements. Wallace, who described himself as “an old-fashioned Democrat” and campaigned using the slogan “I will do my best for you,” argued that the only issue was “whether or not we continue the American way of life.” He defeated B. T. “Nub” Johnson, who had previously served in the state legislature from 1937 to 1941, in the Democratic primary runoff election by a vote of 22,849 to 19,481.

More than half (77 of 150) of the representatives elected to the Fiftieth Texas Legislature were newcomers to the Texas House of Representatives. In addition, all six legislators for Tarrant County (House and Senate) were first-time Texas legislators and veterans of World War II. In a Fort Worth Star-Telegram profile, the six were described as all valuing the “betterment of the educational system, improvement of farm-to-market roads, increase in old-age pensions, and abolishing unnecessary boards and bureaus,” and as being for the “American way of government, and against destructive ‘isms.’”

As a legislator, Wallace served on the House committees on Banks and Banking, Commerce and Manufacturers, Highways and Roads, and State Affairs and was vice chair of the House Committee on Public Printing. During his service, he authored two bills, neither of which became law. House Bill No. 651 would have empowered the State Board of Barber Examiners to set city and county-level minimum price schedules for barbers. The purpose of the bill was to combat the deterioration of sanitary conditions at barber shops and unfair competition caused by “uneconomic trade practices.” House Bill 814, coauthored by four other representatives, aimed to “fix the rate of tax to be levied for school purposes” in certain independent school districts. This bill passed the House but died in the Senate. Wallace also authored House Concurrent Resolution 81, which would have created a nine-person, joint interim committee of the legislature to study the state’s taxation system. The measure was strongly criticized by Representative Woodrow Wilson Bean. The House Committee on Revenue and Taxation unanimously passed the resolution, but it was subsequently tabled on a motion by Bean and never passed.

As a member of the House Committee on State Affairs, Wallace was chair of a three-person subcommittee formed to consider Senate Bill 10, called the “Fair Trade Bill.” The bill’s purpose was to permit manufacturers to set minimum retail prices for their products. The bill was controversial. Similar bills had met with failure in previous sessions—one passed both houses but was vetoed by Governor W. Lee O’Daniel. The House Committee on State Affairs, in an eleven-to-ten vote, sent the Senate bill to a subcommittee comprised of representatives Wallace, James M. Heflin, and Carlton W. Crawford. Chairman Wallace and Heflin supported the bill, with Crawford being in opposition. However, the following week, opponents of the bill had it recommitted to a less-friendly subcommittee, which succeeded in burying the bill. Wallace was also the main opponent of Senate Bill 188, which created the State Board of Plumbing Examiners. He unsuccessfully sought to amend the bill to remove the licensing exemption for maintenance workers who performed plumbing work but who were not engaged as plumbers as their principal trade.

After serving in the Fiftieth Texas Legislature, Wallace announced that he would not be running for reelection due to “business reasons.” About 1948 John and Jane Wallace moved to Dallas, where the couple owned and operated the Stevens Park Café in Oak Cliff. Their daughter, Carra Ruth Wallace, was born in 1956. The family later moved from Oak Cliff to the Lake Highlands area of North Dallas. Wallace worked for his brother’s firm, the Jack L. Wallace Company, as a manufacturer’s representative until his retirement in 1979. He was a longtime member of the Highlands Christian Church, where his daughter married Richard Charles King in 1978.

In 2002 Wallace moved into Emeritus, a senior living home, in Lake Highlands. Jane Wallace died in 2007, and three years later, on July 2, 2010, John Wallace died at the age of ninety-five. He was buried in Restland Memorial Park in Dallas.