Bill Wallace helped create the Harvey Ball Award in 2001 for what was then called the Worcester Historical Museum, but he never expected to receive the award himself.
Wallace retired last winter after serving for 49½ years as executive director of the museum, now called the Museum of Worcester.
Eric Butler replaced him in January and wanted to honor Wallace’s legacy. The obvious way was to present him with the Harvey Ball Award.
“It’s the largest honor that the museum bestows on an individual from Worcester and the impact that they have in this community,” Butler said. “So it’s only fitting that we provide this honor to the individual who started this tradition at the museum.”
The award is named after Harvey Ball, a Worcester native who created the Smiley Face in 1963. Since 2001, the award has been presented to an individual, organization or group of individuals who have put a smile on the face of Worcester and made an impact in the city.
Wallace will receive the award Thursday night at Mechanics Hall. The presentation is the museum’s largest fundraiser.
“I think any celebration of Worcester is a great celebration and I’m pleased to be in the company of previous recipients and recognized with my old friend Harvey Ball,” Wallace said.
Ball died on April 12, 2001, and Wallace believes he may be one of the few recipients of the award whom Ball actually knew.
“He was just a really nice, nice guy,” Wallace said. “Not full of himself, but he wanted Worcester recognized as the place where Smiley Face was born. It was more about Worcester getting that recognition than it was about Harvey Ball.”
Wallace is known for his sense of humor, and he has certainly made an impact by leading the museum and promoting the city for nearly half a century.
“For 49.5 years I have brought people together to collect and tell the stories of Worcester and that’s what I hope we celebrate that evening,” Wallace said.
Wallace said he isn’t sure where he got his sense of humor.
“It must be genetic,” he said. “I’m not sure that everyone would agree that I have a great sense of humor. Some people don’t understand it. It’s a dry, Yankee sense of humor.”
Wallace also likes to call the Harvey Ball Award celebration a friend-raiser.
“The Museum of Worcester is the family album,” Wallace said. “This is like coming to the Thanksgiving table and seeing Uncle Buck who you see once a year, but you hear great stories from him.”
Wallace said he expected to serve as executive director for only three or four years.
“I came here not fully understanding and appreciating how exciting Worcester is,” he said.
Wallace became a longtime Worcester resident and oversaw a great deal of change at the museum. The name changed from the Worcester Historical Society to the Worcester Historical Museum in 1978 and to the Museum of Worcester in January 2025.
In 1985, the museum assumed ownership of the Salisbury Mansion, which was built in 1772 by Stephen Salisbury and today serves as a living museum.
In 1988, the museum moved from 39 Salisbury St. to its current location at 30 Elm St., the former home of the Worcester Horticultural Society.
“It was never boring,” Wallace said.
Wallace modestly credits the museum’s board of trustees and staff and the people of Worcester with making the museum what it is today.
The evening will begin with a cocktail reception from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., followed by the Harvey Ball Award program from 6:30 to 9 p.m. The event is sold out, but those interested can be placed on a waiting list through Mechanics Hall.
“I think everyone in Worcester and everyone who has ever lived in Worcester is a Worcester historian,” Wallace said. “They all have a story to tell.”
Wallace believes it’s up to the museum to tell those stories and celebrate the community.
“It’s a lot easier to receive the award than work on it,” Wallace said, “but if you’re excited about giving the award to celebrate Worcester, then it isn’t really work.”
Wallace gives credit to Anne Harrison for suggesting that the museum present an annual Harvey Ball Award. As a regional representative of the U.S. Postal Service, Harrison took part in a discussion during a planning meeting in the museum’s boardroom about World Smile Day, which Ball had created in 1999 to spread kindness and make people smile.
World Smile Day is held on the first Friday in October each year, and the Museum of Worcester held a World Smile Day celebration last Friday with the opening of the new Smile Gallery and free admission. The gallery was dedicated to Wallace and his efforts to make people smile when they visited the museum.
Wallace helped ensure Harrison’s suggestion became a reality. The museum received permission from the Ball family and an endorsement from the city.
Wallace, 78, grew up in Lancaster, New Hampshire, and joined the Worcester Historical Society as executive director on July 1, 1976. A week later, he turned 28. For the previous three years, he had been director of the Oswego County Historical Society in Oswego, New York.
“I often like to tease Bill that he started working here the year I was born,” said Vanessa Bumpus, the museum’s director of exhibits. “Fifty years is obviously a long time, but it’s also a commitment to doing what you believe and when it’s something that gives back to the community that’s a very big commitment, 50 years, especially with changing audiences and generational shifts.”
Bumpus said she learned a lot from Wallace during her 24 years of working at the museum.
“To him it’s always the visitor first,” she said. “What does the visitor want to see and what stories do we want to tell them? It’s always been very important and it’s our mission here — that everyone is welcome here and everyone should be able to find themselves in the museum whether it’s through an exhibit or a program or an artifact. Everybody’s story matters and that is something we’ve taken as our mission statement and that was put together by Bill.”
With Wallace leading the way, the museum developed projects on the Jewish, Latino, Black and LGBTQ communities in the city.
Wallace is single, and he said he considers his family members to be all the people who will be in attendance Thursday.
Wallace said it was time for him to retire last winter and he had no interest in remaining merely to serve a full 50 years.
Butler has known Wallace for quite a while. They served together for several years on the board of the Worcester Cultural Coalition.
“I’ve always admired the way Bill has allowed the museum to evolve with the times,” Butler said, “particularly around the stories that the museum told, how they told them and by whom they’re told.”
Within the next year, the museum plans to create a director of external engagement, an endowed position supported through the Bill Wallace Fund.
Last January, Elm Street between Chestnut and Linden streets was renamed William Wallace Way.
Wallace plans to create an archive of his mostly paper files for the museum and research the history of Mount Washington in New Hampshire from 1852 to 1864. He has diaries from his great-great-grandfather, who was one of the builders of the Tip Top House, a stone building atop the mountain. He plans to visit libraries to expand that story into an article or book.
He also intends to spend time at the Worcester Public Library and the American Antiquarian Society to answer some of the questions about Worcester he didn’t have time to address in the past, including those about the impact of Brinley Hall, which hosted the first National Women’s Rights Convention in 1850, as well as anti-slavery, temperance and the building of Worcester Center.
Of course, he’ll pass along his research to the museum.
Bill Doyle has been a professional journalist for 47 years, most of them as a sports writer for the Telegram & Gazette. He covered the Boston Celtics for 25 years and has written extensively about golf, boxing and local high school and college sports. He also worked for the campus newspaper when he attended UMass-Amherst. He can be reached at billdoyle1515@gmail.com
