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Wallace was born in Creston on Nov. 1, 1942, and her early years weren’t comical.

She was the oldest of three children of Arthur “Poke” Wallace and his wife, Joann, and Wallace tells about her complex relationship with her parents and her low self-esteem in her autobiography, “Don’t Look Back, We’re Not Going That Way.” The title comes from a phrase her father often used, and she says she acquired both her sense of humor and tenacity from him. “He was a truly hilarious man whose dreams eluded him,” Wallace says.

Growing up with her sister Sharon “Sherry” and brother, Jim, Wallace worked in her father’s store, Wallace Sundries.

“I was sort of a shy kid,” she says. “I didn’t discover humor until I was in my teens,” when she learned that self-deprecating humor garnered laughs and made her popular.

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