Robert Lee Wallace, 79, a longtime accounting director for Commonwealth Edison who worked with Navajo code talkers during World War II, died Saturday, March 2, of heart failure in the ManorCare Health Services Facility, Homewood. Born and raised in the Quad Cities area, Mr. Wallace was an excellent table-tennis player as a young man and won the Illinois Table Tennis Doubles Championship in 1940. After high school, he joined the Marine Corps and was sent to the Pacific. There, he worked in radio intelligence, intercepting coded Japanese messages and assisting Navajo code talkers, whose language was indecipherable to the Axis powers. After he was discharged in 1945, Mr. Wallace returned to the Quad Cities, where he met Wanda Washburn Foote, a war widow with two children. They were married in 1946. He attended Augustana College in Rock Island on the GI Bill, studying accounting and earning a degree in 1952. After graduation, he joined ComEd as an accountant and moved his family to Homewood. He worked at the power company for 32 years, rising to director of revenue accounting. He was on the school board of Homewood District 153 for nine years. After his retirement in 1984, Mr. Wallace took up pocket billiards and in 1991 won the gold medal in the Northern Illinois Senior Olympics. Besides his wife, survivors include three sons, Daniel Foote, Robert and John; three daughters, Kathleen Sjoerdsma, Mary Susan and Linda; 14 grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren. Visitation will be from 1 to 2 p.m. Wednesday , followed by services, in St. Paul’s Community Church, 18200 Dixie Highway, Homewood.
