Wallace didn't fit a set mold,
 says 4^th Grade Teacher

Hundreds Show Up in Support of the Fallen Hero

ST. MARY’S TODAY

LEXINGTON PARK --- The most profound statement about him came from his teacher of Fourth Grade, when the fallen hero was just 11 years old.

“When you got under all of his rough layers, there was a great, neat kid inside” Cari Morrison, of Leonardtown, who was Matthew Wallace’s fourth grade teacher at the Lexington Park Christian School told ST. MARY’S TODAY.

Amid waving of the Star-Spangled Banner, countless people descended on the Patuxent River Assembly of God to visit with and comfort the family of Corporal Matthew Wallace, 22, Wednesday evening. Wallace was wounded in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad and died at a hospital in Germany July 21.

Wallace’s dad, Keith Wallace, mom Mary Wallace, sisters Jessica, Abigail and Micah Wallace, grandmother Elizabeth Bopp of W. Virginia and Jessica’s fiancé Scott Chase, received friends and fans of the dead soldier, church-goers and patriotic citizens.

“I remember his sense of humor,” said Morrison, who was visiting the Wallace's with her family. Morrison said she told Wallace’s parents he was a kid that did not fit inside the box in a traditional school.

“As a teacher you don’t’ remember all your students, but you remember the Matt Wallace's,” Morrison said. She said what she was reading about Wallace in the newspapers is exactly what she had known about him when he was her pupil eleven years ago.

“He had a great heart,” said Joe Barton, 20, of Lusby. Barton went to church with Wallace and had known him for 10 years. “I will miss him.”

Barton remembers him as a very kind and straightforward young man. “He played the guitar very well. I remember at one time he tried to show me how to play the bass.”

Calvin Hernandez, 18, who now goes to college in Florida, and is a close friend of Micah Wallace, said Wallace had introduced him to the kind of music he liked. “Metal and stuff like that,” Hernandez said.

“After church we always used to hang out. We used to talk about music and concerts,” Hernandez said, who added Wallace’s family is awesome and that he and Micah grew on one another.

“Matt Wallace died so that we can live in peace,” Michael Wagner, a layman of the church, who led the prayers for Wallace and his family said. Wagner prayed God may bring back the soldiers serving in foreign countries safely back home.

“When he was a little guy, I was his Sunday school teacher,” Wagner, who had known the Wallaces for 20 years, told ST. MARY’S TODAY.

“My hope would be people would honor the men and women who fall in the battlefield and live their lives as honorably as the servicemen who were killed, wounded and those who are still serving overseas,” Wagner said.

After graduating from Great Mills High School, Wallace had worked at the Sheetz before enlisting in the US Army in February 2004. He was assigned in the Army’s 10 Calvary Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 4^th Infantry Division at Fort Hood.

He was deployed to Iraq eight months ago.

“Matthew Wallace enjoyed surfing, skating and listening to music and earned the love and respect of countless friends and family,” a honor citation from St. Mary’s Board of County Commissioners on Wednesday said.