A St. Mary’s soldier’s story

After his death, family remembers young man who hit his stride

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Reid Silverman Keith and Mary Wallace sit outside their Lexington Park home, its yard adorned with U.S. flags in tribute to their son Matthew, who died last week from injuries suffered while serving in Iraq with the U.S. Army. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo

Wallace, 22, died last Friday from injuries suffered in a roadside bomb blast five days earlier in Iraq, where the St. Mary’s man was a cavalry scout with the U.S. Army. Before his death at a hospital in Germany, with his family by his side, Wallace was promoted to corporal and received the Purple Heart, Army Achievement Medal and Spurs honors for his combat service.

As his family prepared themselves for Wednesday’s prayer services, Thursday’s memorial service and next week’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery, they talked Tuesday at their home in Lexington Park about the young man’s transition from what his father called a ‘‘pre-adult crisis.”

‘‘He was wandering from place to place and sleeping with a variety of friends,” Keith Wallace, 54, said. ‘‘He had this sense that there was something better and he was capable of doing something more significant than day-to-day existence.”

‘‘Matt thought things through, almost too much,” his mother Mary Wallace said. But during the three years before his enlistment in early 2004, the young man who left Great Mills High School after his sophomore year, earned his GED, became a steady worker and gravitated toward people already in the military.

‘‘He started pursuing friends in the service, to ask questions,” according to his older sister, Jessica Wallace, who recalled spotting him surfing in nearby Chesapeake Bay with U.S. Marines, more than a year before his enlistment. That time was ‘‘18 months in prep for basic training. He loved it. He took pride in that.”

In addition to his work at a Sheetz convenience store in California, where flags flew at half-staff this week, Wallace was a busboy for about a year at Linda’s Cafe in Lexington Park.

‘‘He was a hard worker,” Claire Andrews, manager of the cafe’s second eatery in Leonardtown, said this week of the employee whose head once was adorned with a Mohawk haircut and facial piercings.

‘‘He came in and told us he had made a decision to go into the service, and we were real proud of him,” Andrews said. ‘‘When he came back in to see us, he did a complete turnaround. He came a long way. He matured quickly.”

Matthew Wallace had a hernia operation at his own expense before he could enlist. He had first told his older sister in a phone call in 2003 that he was going to join the military, and early the next year, he began the 16 weeks of basic training at Fort Knox required for his goal to be a cavalry scout.

‘‘Four months later, I was standing in the Kentucky heat, watching my baby brother stand up as a soldier,” Jessica Wallace, 24, said. ‘‘I was proud. It was a big day.”

Despite the heat that day, the new soldier kept his uniform on for a flight home with his family, and a man came up to him at an airport lounge and thanked him for his service.

‘‘He no longer belonged to just us. He was now America’s son, America’s brother,” his older sister said. ‘‘I have to remind myself that there are hundreds if not thousands of people who are grieving with us.”

In addition to his parents and older sister, the soldier left behind two younger teenage sisters, Abigail and Micah, with memories of his love for music that included a collection of guitars and compact discs of his own performances recorded at a friend’s home studio.

‘‘I think the 9⁄11 events played a lot in Matt’s thinking,” Mary Wallace, 49, said. ‘‘He told me he was going so his sisters’ children never had to go. He felt he had to do something now.”

The soldier also leaves behind a stronger relationship with his family, including his father, a relationship nurtured through calls, mail and a visit home on leave last April.

‘‘It was clear that our relationship had grown closer than I ever thought a father and son could grow,” Keith Wallace said.

Outside the Wallaces’ home on Tuesday morning, a former coworker of Mary Wallace at St. Mary’s Hospital’s operating room planted flowers between small U.S. flags standing along the perimeter of the yard.

‘‘You just do whatever you can do,” Pat Raley said as she carried a bag of mulch.

In a window of the house that had again become Matthew Wallace’s home, an electric candle still glows.

‘‘That was our way of leaving the light on for him,” Mary Wallace said.

E-mail John Wharton at jwharton@somdnews.com.