Most of the people who recognized him knew Albert Wallace only as Chickenman, the congenial and pragmatic man who for years lugged chicken dinners every Sunday to the Red Cross homeless shelter in Colorado Springs.
Wallace, 63, died of pancreatic cancer Sept. 9 in Colorado Springs.
Tall, with a resonant voice and a Southern accent thicker than white gravy, Wallace grew up in Alabama and served in the Vietnam War, where he won a Bronze Star. He remained in southern Colorado after his discharge from Fort Carson in the 1970s.
For nearly two decades, Wallace drifted amorphously between Widefield and Colorado Springs. He spent most of his waking time drunk or working on getting drunk, according to Wallace and others who knew him.
As he said later, his only constant companions were a half-gallon jug of cheap wine and a can of Colt 45.
Wallace spent at least 14 years homeless in Colorado.
He knew which shelters offered soup kitchens and which shelters required clients to sit through a religious service or pep talk before allowing access to food and a bed. Sometimes, he foraged through Dumpsters and occasionally slept in them when he couldn’t find a car or a friend’s couch.
In 1991, as Wallace took refuge in a Red Cross shelter, he experienced an epiphany. He decided, as he later put it, “to get out of the life.” He promised himself that when he was back on his feet, he would do something for the shelter and the people it served.
It took several years for Wallace to rebuild his life, with help from Veterans Administration hospital staffers in Grand Junction and Denver.
On the day before Mother’s Day in May 1993, Wallace decided to fulfill his old pledge. To his own surprise – “I was thinking more about buying a new television” for the shelter, he told the Colorado Springs Independent in 1999 – Wallace bought dozens of roses. He took them to the Red Cross shelter on Mother’s Day and handed them out to the women there. Their tearful gratitude prompted him to bring dinner for them, too.
“And then it came to me. Why don’t I just do it for everybody?” Wallace said in the Independent article.
Wallace began bringing fried chicken to the Red Cross shelters on Sundays. He started with chicken he cooked himself.
Then he brought chicken dinners discounted or donated by fast-food restaurants. Finally, he worked out a deal with a Colorado Springs supermarket and brought enough groceries each Sunday to provide shelter clients with chicken dinners.
In 1994, Wallace took over the Good News Foundation, a nonprofit, nondenominational organization that serves low-income and homeless people in southern Colorado.
From the start, he brooked no rationalizations from people presenting themselves as victims.
“I help the needy, not the greedy,” he said, believing he could distinguish the difference.
Wallace helped the needy families he found through local schools and social counselors.
He refused to hand cash to street beggars, but one Christmas Eve, he gave his last $40 to a homeless father wanting to buy gifts for his children.
“He was homeless for 14 years by choice, and he would tell you that,” said Julie Hanson, the Good News Foundation office manager, who knew Wallace for 12 years.
“He had options. Everyone has options,” Hanson said. “He’d been where they were. He knew how they felt. He knew the people who were pulling his leg, and the ones who were being honest. He told them, ‘I been there before; I know.’ He’d say, ‘Don’t do me that way.”‘
Wallace typically spent six days a week at the foundation. More than half of his time went to fundraising.
The foundation is a shoestring operation, and Wallace often dug into his own wallet during donation droughts such as the one in 2002, when donations were down $40,000. Last year, he personally paid $7,000 toward the foundation’s bills.
Wallace calculated that since 1994, the foundation provided the needy with 90,000 Thanksgiving meals, 30,000 Christmas suppers and 1,000 pairs of eyeglasses, and sent 500 needy children to summer camp in nearby Divide.
Several times, Wallace fretted that the foundation’s shaky finances might force Good News to close down. As his own health, already debilitated by diabetes, faltered, Wallace tried to remain optimistic.
“Don’t worry ’bout the mule goin’ blind, just set up and hold the line,” he often told Hanson. When she voiced concern for Wallace’s own future, he reassured her.
“Working for the Lord does not pay much,” Wallace liked to say, “but the retirement is out of this world.”
Survivors include his wife, Wanda Wallace of Widefield; mother Louise Wallace of Bessemer, Ala.; brothers Ronnie Wallace of Bessemer, Ala., and James Wallace of Milwaukee; and sisters Lillian Jones of Bessemer, Ala., and Amy Jean Wallace of Huntsville, Ala..
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
