Wallace Umber, a WWII veteran and retired music teacher from Los Angeles has died at the age of 96 after contracting COVID-19 in his retirement home in Santa Barbara.
For 36 years, Wallace was a music teacher, he founded Santa Monica College’s emeritus concert band taught music at Venice High School and Emerson Middle School in Westwood where Michael Jackson attended for one semester. Wallace’s band included the young Michael Jackson during this period.
Wallace was only 19 when he stormed the beaches of Normandy for WWII but his real passion was music and he taught his six children how to play instruments.
All our condolences to his family.
SOURCE: NCB Los Angeles
