Aida Lucille Wallace

Aida “Jackie” Wallace died peacefully Friday at Brookdale Pecan Park Memory Care in Arlington after a long battle with dementia. She was 98. She was born Aida Lucille Jackson in San Antonio on May 6, 1923, the second daughter of Junius and Felisa (Rios) Jackson. She grew up in[ San Antonio's heavily Hispanic and mostly impoverished West Side with her sister Mary Louise. She was very close to her father and was a rough-and-tumble tomboy. She would say she was the son he never had. The Rioses were members of the pre-revolutionary bourgeoisie in the Mexican state of Durango. In 1910 the family gathered up what hard wealth it possessed and fled to the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Part of the family remained in the Valley while Felisa, her mother, sisters and a brother moved to San Antonio. Junius Jackson was a mostly illiterate son of the New Orleans streets until making his way to Texas in a cattle boat. He could do sums and sign his name. During the Great Depression, the former Army baker held a succession of jobs. Aida's favorite was when he made the ice cream at the local dairy. Her love of ice cream was with her to the end. After earning an associate degree in nursing from the University of the Incarnate Word, Aida did private-duty nursing in East Texas until hearing President Roosevelt issue a call for nurses for the war effort. She returned to San Antonio, received a Navy commission and served as a Navy nurse during World War II. She acquired her nickname “Jackie” while in the Navy, a spin on her surname. Her can-do personality did not correspond with Aida, named for an opera. Her last assignment was at Bethesda Naval Hospital near Washington, where she met a pharmacist's mate named James Wallace. At that time, the Navy did not allow married women to serve, so she resigned her commission and married Wallace in a small ceremony in Bethesda. Jackie would later call her years of Navy service the happiest years of her life. After a successful college stay at UT her husband got his first job after his discharge with a drug store in his hometown of Mount Pleasant, Texas. A short time later they moved to nearby Paris, Texas, where the Wallaces had their first two children: Marie Jacqueline, also known as Jackie, and brother James. In the early 1950s, the Wallaces moved to Arlington, Texas, where the elder James joined what would become the Terry-Wallace Pharmacy. The births of sons Terry and Michael soon followed. Jackie became active in the town's lone Catholic church at the time, St. Maria Goretti. She joined the nursing staff at Fort Worth Children's Hospital as an overnight nursing supervisor in the early 1960s, a position she held for two decades. When the Texas Rangers brought major league baseball to Arlington, Jackie took on the task of keeping the team's uniforms clean and repaired. In doing so, she formed friendships with many of the team's players. Her husband died in 1988. In the 1990s, she became involved with Mission Arlington in the early years of its clinics. She worked with the clinic even after being admitted into care. During those years, you may have noticed her driving around Arlington with American flags flapping furiously in the slipstream of her car. As the years passed, her dementia became more obvious. She would become lost on familiar roads and showed other symptoms of decline. She left the house where she and James had raised their family since 1961. She entered memory care in 2014 and remained for the rest of her life. The family wants to express its gratitude for the kindness and care she received while a resident at Claire Bridge, the memory care unit at Brookdale Pecan Park. They also wish to express thanks to the staff of St. Gabriel's Hospice. Jackie is survived by daughter Marie Jacqueline Wallace; sons James, Terry and Michael Wallace; and granddaughter Denise Wallace. Her remains will be interred in the Garden of Friends at the St. Maria Goretti Catholic Church. The ceremony will be private. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in her name to Mission Arlington, 210 W. South St., Arlington, TX 76010, with “Attention: Clinic.”