A Belated Public Thank You

A friend and former colleague, Barbara Cattrall Wallace, died March 16, after a long battle with cancer at age 61. We worked together for years at Bee Newspapers, and she later worked at the Internal Revenue Service and served as a lay commissioned pastor at several Presbyterian churches.

Barbara was also a U.S. Army veteran and journalist for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, including in Germany. This is where the musical portion of the story connects. Barbara purchased a good number of vinyl albums in Germany during her service there, and eventually, she stopped listening to some of them. One day at work, knowing my musical geekdom and writing, she asked me if I wanted some of them, some of the more rock-oriented albums, making sure I knew that none of them were too recent (this was the late 1980s). I said of course I would take them.

A couple of days later, she brought a bag with about 10-12 albums in it to my desk and told me to enjoy them; I thanked Barbara and barely waited until I got home to check them. There were several Rick Wakeman albums, then a Bebop Deluxe album (cool), and the last two I pulled out of the bag were "Autobahn" and "Radio-Activity," both by Kraftwerk. There were two copies of "Autobahn," one in German and one in English, as well as the English version of "Radio-Activity," despite its German print on the cover. I profusely thanked Barbara the next day, and later thanked her again when she left Bee Newspapers.

But despite my writings over the years, I don't think I properly thanked Barbara, because I have enjoyed the Kraftwerk albums in particular an awful lot, and hold them as rather prized items in my larger than I ever expected vinyl collection. That was the kind of person Barbara was, doing good, kind things for other people because they were good acts and made people's lives a bit better.


Barbara is survived by her husband, Sherman C. Wallace Jr.; a son, David Cattrall; a daughter, Deanna Wallace, and three sisters, as well as many friends and colleagues who were kindly touched by her presence.