ROUNSAVELL, George Wallace

The Wickenburg Sun, Wickenburg, AZ September 2, 1998, p. 18 George Wallace Rounsavell of Wickenburg died peacefully at home August 30 of complications related to Alzheimers Disease. He was 82. Mr. Rounsavell was born October 2, 1915 in Spokane, Washington. He had been a resident of Arizona for six years. Mr. Rousavell was a former official of the Idaho Public Assistance Department; long-time elder in the Pocatello, Idaho, Presbyterian Church; Shriner and leader in the earlier years of the Idaho Association of Retarded Children. He was raised in the logging-mining country of north Idaho. “Wally”, as he was known to family, friends and work associates all his life, graduated from the University of Idaho in the depths of the Great Depression (where he edited the school yearbook in 1933). This contributed to his becoming a life-long New Deal Democrat. His admiration for President Roosevelt contributed to his taking a case worker job in the then newly formed Idaho Department of Public Assistance in Lewiston. That same year, 1940, he married Jane Jones, with whom he had grown up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. World War II demands led to his assignment in the American Red Cross of the U.S. Army as a field director stationed in Ft. Huachuca, Arizona. After the war, he returned to Idaho state service, moving to Pocatello in 1946 and working his way up to become district supervisor for the seven county Southeast Idaho Region of the Department of Public Assistance in the 1970s, he became a regional executive in Region VI of the reorganized Department of Health and Welfare, retiring in 1975 after 31 years of service to the state. Responding to the challenge of having a child born mentally retarded, Wallace became a leader in the movement in the 1950s to improve educational opportunities for developmentally disabled children in Idaho. As president of the then brand new Idaho Chapter of Retarded Children, he was instrumental in helping Idaho to become one of the first states in the nation to pass laws requiring public equal offerings for its disabled children. In recognition, Wally was chosen as a Idaho delegate to the 1960 Decentennial White House Conference on Children and Youth in Washington, D. C. Following retirement, he was known on the campus at Idaho State University for several years as a lecturer on Social Policy in the Sociology Department. Shortly thereafter, Wally and his wife Jane gradually renewed their World War II love affair with Arizona, to the point of moving permanently to Wickenburg several years ago. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Jane; children Dan of Portland, Nancy Hall of Boise and George Wallace, Jr. of Wickenburg; and grandchildren Brian Hall of Reno, Camille and Natalie Hall of Scottsdale, and Amy Rounsavell of Portland. Memorial contributions are requested to be sent to local Associations for Retarded Children or to local Shriners Hospitals. Call Brown’s Wickenburg Funeral Home, which handled all the arrangements, for funeral service information.