Marjorie Winchester Hayes Wallace, M.D.
1916-2011 - Page 2
After medical school, Marjorie was an intern in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins on the Osler service. She lived in a tiny room in the rotunda of the Johns Hopkins cupola, giving new meaning to the the term ‘internment’. Interns were unpaid and she sold blood to pay for toiletries. After internship she enlisted and received a commission in the U.S. Army. Her boyfriend at the time was a British medical student studying at Johns Hopkins to avoid the bombing of London. She enlisted to follow him to London. The Army however, had other plans, and she was sent to Fort Knox in Kentucky. She continued to play the cello and actually took the cello with her to the Kentucky Derby - we can only assume to play along.
During WWII the army sent her to Hollywood to make hygiene films as the medical consultant in Frank Capra’s studio. She then performed a study on chemically-treated chemical warfare undergarments in women for the Army. The concept was that a carbon-treated undergarment would somehow protect soldiers from chemical weapons. Women must be different so they would test them in women as well. Marjorie wrote a very fine report entitled “Impregnated Women’s Underwear”. Marjorie was disappointed that no one in the Army seemed to notice.
After Hollywood, Marjorie was assigned to the Hopkins Medical Corp and stationed in Leyte, Philippines as one of only two female physicians in the entire Pacific Theater. She enjoyed the tropics very much. The British military gave her a baby blue jeep. She was allowed to fly the transport plane when she was transferred to Manila. Part of the planned invasion force of Japan, she worked to prepare for the expected 2,000,000 casualties, if such an invasion took place. Ultimately she was stationed in Tokyo at Saint Luke’s Hospital, known by the locals as San Ruku Hospital. After the war, she was discharged as a major and returned to her training in medicine.
Marjorie completed a psychiatry residency in Boston at a Harvard affiliate. On her first day of residency the chairman of the department of psychiatry took great care to explain to Marjorie his opinion that all schizophrenia was caused by masturbation. She received further training at the Peter Brent Brigham and in Chicago to become a board certified child psychiatrist. She also trained as a psychoanalyst. Marjorie finally settled in San Francisco where she taught at Langley Porter. She had a private practice at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and then in Orinda, CA. She served as the first president of the Northern California Child Psychiatry Society.
In 1971 Marjorie married Roger Wayne Wallace, Ph.D. a physicist and nuclear engineer at UCB. She remained married to Roger until her death. Marjorie and Roger helped her nephew Daryl Browne attend graduate school at UC Berkeley and medical school at Yale. Daryl Browne, M.D. continued her interest in child psychiatry by becoming a child psychiatrist in San Francisco. Marjorie is survived by her husband, Roger, Roger’s daughter Betsy Karen Wallace Jones, Roger’s two sons, Douglas Charles Wallace, M.D., a cardiac surgeon, and Arthur William Wallace, M.D., Ph.D. a cardiac anesthesiologist, her nephew, Daryl Browne of San Francisco and niece Patricia Browne of Canada.