Funny Lady Marcia Wallace Responds to Life’s Daunting Challenges with Humor and a Sense of Purpose

More mature TV viewers will forever remember her as the lovable red-headed secretary Carol Kester on the popular 70s sitcom The Bob Newhart Show. Current TV viewers – both young and old – know her as the voice of teacher Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons. And then there are still others who embrace her as the indefatigable, inspirational cancer survivor and women’s health advocate who has something important to say about living life to its fullest.

“She” is Marcia Wallace, one of America’s most beloved comedic actresses and the most recent recipient of Roswell Park’s Gilda Radner Courage Award.

Wallace received this tribute at the Institute’s black-tie gala, All-Star Night, in January for carrying on the legacy of Radner, the late Saturday Night Live comedienne, who raised national awareness of cancer by going public with her own battle with the disease.

A sold-out crowd of 1,200 guests heard Wallace's keynote address, which was based on her published autobiography, Don’t Look Back, We’re Not Going That Way: How I Overcame a Rocky Childhood, a Nervous Breakdown, Breast Cancer, Widowhood, Fat, Fire & Menopausal Motherhood and Still Managed to Count My Lucky Chickens. Wallace candidly shared her moving story of her cancer struggles, while encouraging other women to become both vigilant and educated about cancer risks and treatment options.

Long before she achieved celebrity status, Wallace found a lump in her breast, which was subsequently removed and found to be benign. The experience, she said, was life-altering and “kind of an epiphany” for her. “I didn’t know what questions to ask. I didn’t know anything about options. I didn’t know anything about anything. And I thought, ‘I’m never going to be this scared again or this unprepared. The doctors can be in charge of my medical treatment, but I am going to be in charge of my health.’”

In 1985, while preparing for her wedding to Dennis Hawley, she had a “gut feeling” that something was wrong and had a mammogram. (She had had a negative mammogram six months earlier, but couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to be learned.) The mammogram revealed a lump, less than one centimeter. Only this time, it was breast cancer.

After removing the lump, doctors recommended mastectomy, but Wallace opted for radiation. “I caught it early. I never got sick and it never came back. Now that’s about a 10-minute movie of the week, but it’s plenty exciting for real life.”

In her book, she praises the courage of women who struggled with breast cancer 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago. “Those women are my heroes—the ones who didn’t make it, the ones who did—when there was no networking, no support, certainly very few choices. You could lose your job, you could lose your insurance, and nobody was saying the word ‘breast’ or the word ‘cancer’. They certainly weren’t saying them together. And then the wife of the president [Betty Ford] said “Hello, I have breast cancer. Get a mammogram.” Tens of thousands of women did, and the journey began.”

Wallace’s own journey has been fraught with an unusually high number of detours and roadblocks. In 1992, her husband Denny developed pancreatic cancer and died, leaving Marcia to raise their adopted son Mikey alone. She met these challenges head-on with humor and a renewed sense of purpose and resolve.

Wallace says that she’s a lot like the character she played on The Bob Newhart Show. “In a lot of ways, Carol and I are the same person: Midwestern, loyal, funny, optimistic, and we both used our humor as a defense,” she said.

As a long-term breast cancer survivor, Marcia has become a high profile advocate for breast cancer awareness. Wallace was featured in May 1994 on the cover of Life magazine as a breast cancer survivor, and in the October 1998 People magazine cover story on the American breast cancer epidemic. In between a busy acting schedule in plays, commercials, TV shows and animated films and series, Wallace has continued to make time to spread her hopeful message on talk shows and through regular speaking engagements.

She has successfully used adversity to fuel her commitment to raising breast cancer awareness. “Denny’s death from such a deadly cancer made me more determined than ever to connect with as many women as I could to promote early breast cancer detection, which is doable. If one woman at the end of my presentation says, ‘Alright, I’ll check out that lump,’ or ‘I’ll get that mammogram,’ that’s one life.”

The takeaway message? "My message is early cancer detection,” she said. “I beat that drum!”

And for Wallace, laughter may indeed be good medicine. “People think laughter trivializes when things are tough, but it doesn’t,” she said during an interview with a local reporter. “I like what Norman Cousins said about how laughter is the only wall between us and the dark.”

Wallace joins a prestigious list of past Courage Award awardees including Sam Donaldson, the late Robert Urich, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Senator Robert Dole, Scott Hamilton, Barry Bostwick, the late Joel Siegel, Rue McClanahan, Ted Kennedy, Jr. and others.

For more information on her book and the inspirational life of Marcia Wallace, visit her website at www.marciawallace.com.