Wallace Reid Walker, Sr., passed away quietly at home among family on October 8^th, after a battle with lung cancer.

Wallace was born October 31st 1933, in Pecos, TX, and spent his earliest years on the family cotton farm. He endured the poverty of the Great Depression as well as the shortages and rationing of World War II. At the age of 17, he left high school in Corpus Christi, TX, and joined the Navy to see the world and serve during the Korean Conflict. In the Navy he met life-long friends, learned some Japanese, and picked up welding, which would become his career stateside.

Wallace started a family with his first wife, Gerallene, and lived and worked in many places all over the West. Eventually he settled in Las Vegas, NV, where he met his second wife, Carolyn. He worked at a nuclear rocket engine test facility at the Nevada Test Site. It was there that he met the president, John F. Kennedy, who had come to visit the facility. It was also there that he was exposed to beryllium and weaponized uranium, which no doubt contributed to the aggressive cancer that eventually, claimed his life.

Around 1977, Wallace and his family moved to the Tri-Cities, WA, where he worked at Hanford, out of Union Local 598, before retiring in the mid 1990's. Wallace loved fishing, books, road trips, cold lagers, steaks well-done, and gold panning. He was loud, quick with a joke, an extremely hard worker, and could fix or build just about everything. Wallace was the father of a blended family of 6 children, grandfather of nine, and great-grandfather of three.

Wallace was preceded in death by his grandson, Alex, and daughter, Patricia Estes. He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Carolyn, and his five sons, Wallace Jr., Pasco; Robert, Las Vegas, NV; and Edward, Ronald, and David of Burbank, WA.