In the 1970s, Marcia Wallace played the wise-cracking receptionist Carol Kester on the Bob Newhart Show. After that series ended, she became a mainstay on game shows. To generations of fans of The Simpsons she will always be Edna Krabappel, Bart Simpson’s fourth-grade teacher (“Do what I mean, not what I say” was one of her well used lines). Wallace won the Outstanding Voice-Over Performance Emmy in 1992.
Wallace, a Delta Zeta, died on October 25, 2013, due to complications from breast cancer. She was a native of Creston, Iowa. After graduating from Creston High School, she entered Parsons College in Fairfield, Iowa, majoring in English and Theater. Parsons College was founded in 1875; it went bankrupt in 1973 and it had a storied history. The Delta Nu chapter of Delta Zeta at Parsons was chartered in 1957 and it closed in 1971 when the college closed. (Parson’s story is an interesting one and worth a trip down the rabbit hole.)
Wallace was awarded Delta Zeta’s 2009 Woman of the Year Award. She attended the 2010 Delta Zeta convention. To see Wallace being interviewed by The Lamp Editor Nancy Brewer at the convention, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-TTZNUXDAU. Wallace recounted that “my Delta Zeta sisters had my back.” She also credits her chapter advisor with being “like a surrogate family to me” and helping her to be the woman she became.
My condolences to her family and her Delta Zeta family.
Marcia Wallace and The Lamp Editor Nancy Brewer at the 2010 Delta Zeta Convention in Tucson, Arizona.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.
