Wallace Morton Rudolph

Wallace M. Rudolph An eternal optimist and modern-day Renaissance man, Wallace M. Rudolph passed away at his home in Orlando on March 18th at the age of 86. Wallace was born in Chicago on September 11, 1930 and grew up in Elgin after his father passed away when Wallace was only 2 years old. Raised by his mother, Bertha, and his beloved nanny "Nana" Wallace read voraciously and, during his junior year at Elgin High School, was thrown out of history class for correcting the teacher. Wallace played on the tennis team, which began a love of the sport that lasted a lifetime. He graduated from high school at 16 and, three years later,from the University of Chicago. He went on to University of Chicago Law School, graduating in 1953. He worked on an arbitration project with Soia Mentschikoff for a couple of years and was a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago teaching Legal Writing. From 1954-57 he was on active duty in the Army as a JAG officer. In 1957, he began his legal career at Antonow and Fink, a Chicago law firm. He decided to join academia, beginning his legal teaching career at the University of Nebraska College of Law in 1962, where he developed a strong allegiance to Nebraska football. After a first marriage to Mary Jane, Wallace married Janet (Gordon) in 1964 and they had three daughters. During his tenure in Nebraska, Wallace served as a Judge of the Court of Industrial Relations and a Commissioner on Uniform State Laws. In 1976, he moved to Tacoma to become the Dean at the University of Puget Sound School of Law, now Seattle University School of Law. During his tenure, he helped to relocate the law school to a new building in downtown Tacoma. After three years as Dean,he returned to the faculty, teaching Constitutional and Administrative Law, as well as many other subjects. In 1997, he moved to the University of Orlando Law School as Dean. After publishing many articles, Wallace retired from academia back to the practice of law in Florida in 1998. Following the end of his long marriage to Janet, in 1998 he married Mimi (Longworth) and helped raise her two children. In his "retirement" he continued to practice law and began taking bar exams for "fun." He was still working when he passed away, teaching students how to pass the bar exam and developing his own bar exam materials. He remained an avid reader and lived the life of the mind until the very end. He loved his family and would do anything for them. He was predeceased by his mother (Bertha) and father (Norman), as well as his two brothers and sisters-in-law (Robert, Lloyd, Judy, and Susanne). He is survived by his wife, Mimi, her two children (Hallie and Byron) and his daughters Alexey (Doug), Sarah (Doug), and Rebecca, and his sister-in-law, Sheila. He will be missed greatly by all of them as well as by his four grandchildren, Clarissa, William, Sam, and Josh. Donations in lieu of flowers can be made to the Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando or the University of Chicago Law School. A memorial service is planned for July 2, 2017 in Tacoma Washington