Outdoors TV host Don Wallace dies
Don Wallace, whose popular “Wallace Wildlife Show” aired on television for almost 40 years, died Wednesday. He was 90 years old.
Funeral services for Wallace will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday at New Hope Methodist Church, 11600 N Council Road. Wallace, of Yukon, was married to his wife, Pat, for 40 years.
Wallace was one of the early pioneers in outdoors television, and his hunting and fishing show was the first of its kind in the Oklahoma City market.
But before he was an outdoors television personality, Wallace was a disc jockey spinning records at Oklahoma radio stations and organizing teen hops.
Born Don Wallace Peterson and raised in Kansas, his first job was in Bartlesville at KWON in 1949. He moved to KOMETulsa in 1955 and was the first disc jockey to play rock `n' roll on the air in Tulsa. He decided to drop his last name for on-air jobs, so to listeners, viewers and fans, he became known as Don Wallace throughout his career.
Wallace accepted a job at WKY radio station in Oklahoma City and was still spinning records and hosting teen hops, but he also had a passion for the outdoors. He persuaded the management at WKY-TV to also let him host an outdoors television show.
“It took four years of convincing,” Wallace told The Oklahoman. “My pay was to be $5 a show with no expenses.”
Wallace was given a 15-minute outdoor show in 1965 to fill dead spots on weekends where needed. Six years later, the “Wallace Wildlife Show” with its hunting and fishing stories became a 30-minute segment that aired in prime time.
The television show aired for 23 years and was syndicated in five states. The final “Wallace Wildlife Show” was broadcast on Dec. 31, 1988, but it continued over the airways for 16 more years in reruns.
Wallace ended each show with his signature sign- off: “Good luck, good hunting and good fishing.”