Expecting Someone Shorter

Peter D. Wallace, 19 June 1961 – 26 December 2024

Prelude

I have been working for many years. Not enough, by any stretch, but many. And, as with many males Of A Certain Age, my first regular job was delivering newspapers. Specifically, in my case, the Cincinnati Enquirer, a morning paper that had some appeal even sixty-some miles and a state away. For something more than a year, I got up in the early morning, folded, rubber banded, threw the bag over my shoulder, got on my banana-seated Schwinn, and delivered newspapers. If I avoided the dogs and was fast enough, I could get a fifteen cent Nehi Grape from a soda machine near the end of the route, and finish in plenty of time to wash up, change clothes as needed, and catch the bus to school.

At some point, I decided to give up the paper route. I forget why, though I hating having to ask people for the money they owed. Or maybe it was getting to sleep after Tomorrow with Tom Snyder and getting up before Sunrise Semester. Whatever. Giving up a paper route is something you cannot do in good conscience without having someone to take it over. So Pete Wallace, who was a grade behind me, became my successor.

He was enthusiastic, eager to learn. By the second day of training, I didn’t need to show him anything. By the end of the week, he was ready. And still eager.

Fugue

I knew one of Pete’s sisters—he had three, all of whom outlived him—better than I knew him. She would quietly accomplish whatever she set out to do, from calculus to chemistry to competitive swimming. She had perfect posture, possibly because of the year she wore a back brace but more likely because she worked at it, while making it seem effortless. And she always knew the right thing to say—to the extent that even now, a few decades later, she would still be in the Top Five on my list of people I would want to talk me down from something. (Insert Obligatory Exception for Family Members here.) Of all the people in our Midwestern, no-Advanced Placement classes, public County High School class, she was the only one I thought could—would—change the world for good.

I feel like one of the demi-gods in Tom Holt’s beloved Expecting Someone Taller, which was nominated for the William L. Crawford Memorial Award for Best First Fantasy Novel in 1991.

Irrelevant Sidebar

(Full disclosure: I chaired the Crawford Award Committee from 1995 through 1997—taking over from my now-wife, Shira Daemon, who chaired it in 1994. The Chairs following me, from Diana P. Francis forward, have maintained a greater fealty to genre fantasy. I remain unrepentant that we gave Jonathan Lethem his first major award. This entire disclosure has nothing to do with the rest of this appreciation.)

If You Build It, Will They Come?

It may be a crowded space now, but in the mid-1980s it was not clear that there was or would be demand for a Computerized Maintenance Management Software (CMMS) solution for Facilities Management. Of the companies alive today, only two of the major ones—Phoenix Data Systems (AIMS 3; Southfield, MI), and Mapcon Technologies Inc (Mapcon; Des Moines, IA)—predate Mainstream Software’s founding, while both TMA Systems LLC (WebTMA Enterprise; Tulsa, OK) and M1 Software Inc (M1 Facility—formerly MaintenanceFirst—Louisville, KY) launched around the same time.  The Midwest is home to all save one of those companies. Basing Mainstream Software in Twinsburg, Ohio, made sense.

Infrastructure isn’t sexy. Maintaining data on equipment, schedules, and downtime; improving preventive maintenance procedures, monitoring and maintaining inventory levels, are all BAU procedures at-best-moderately-paid staff perform. Yes, it is precisely the type of staff you always think you can reduce by one or two and no one will notice, but when they do notice, it is reputation destroying. So if you build a complex system with multiple master lists—think inventory, machinery, printers, facsimiles machines (possibly even telexes), telephones, kitchen equipment, furniture, carpeting, floor types, and MANY more—that is easy enough to use and doesn’t require 24/7 onsite technical support, you might be able to license it for 10-20% more than it costs you to maintain it. It’s not an area that will create Generational Wealth, but it can be a steady money maker—if you reinvest in the product and expand its platforms as technology allows.

Human Interlude

After graduating from Purdue, Pete spent five years working for British Petroleum, learning the ins and outs of Retail Oil Marketing and Maintenance. The BP-owned Travel Centers of America is headquartered in Westlake, Ohio, about 35 miles from Twinsburg, especially if you take routes that avoid going into Cleveland. Such roles either tend to make people stay at the company forever or look for ways to never have to work in such a role again. Pete used his BP tenure to gain the specific business knowledge to develop CrossForm as a product that could be targeted at retail oil companies. When Standard Oil licensed CrossForm, he was able to leave his job at BP and devote his full efforts to CrossForm, developing and marketing it to other firms while employing developers, designers, marketers and administrators as needed.

The company never became a behemoth, but it consistently employed people in double-digits and made inroads into decent number of Fortune 500 companies, most especially finding success with CBRE (now The CBRE Group), which itself was formed from the merger of the Commercial Real Estate part what was originally Coldwell Banker (in the US since 1907) and Richard Ellis International (founded in London a few years before the Colonies were revolting).

Coda

He ran and expanded Mainstream Software over the next 25-ish years, “keeping a talented staff motivated, fulfilled and productive.” This is not an easy task in itself, let alone while expanding business, marketing the company, and keeping existing relationships productive and positive. He became a Director of CBRE in 2017 and ultimately sold Mainstream Software to CBRE in 2019, when he retired, still in his late 50s.

After retiring, he moved back to Indiana—near a couple of his aforementioned sisters—until, right around Xmas of 2024, he took ill and ended up in the hospital in Carmel, passing from this world on the 26^th. I doubt next Christmas will be as cheerful for his family as 2023 was, but may it at least be better than 2024 was.

His memory should be a blessing: a true American success story, with the time to enjoy that success rent untimely.

Denouement

James Polshek in his Preface to Build, Memory lists the qualities that served him well: ambition, impatience, imagination, persistence, optimism, and energy. I have often failed on especially optimism, but my memory is that Pete never did. What I initially took for a peppy enthusiasm was a bright, positive outlook on life and work that served him well then through his working years and, I suspect, in building his active-but-retired life back in Indiana.

Most importantly, he never rested on his laurels—ambition and impatience—continuing to expand CrossForm’s functionality, including the move to tablets and mobile devices as soon as IoT technologies allowed them to replace clipboards and paper inspection reports.

CBRE recently rebranded the product as ServiceInsight, now officially located in Waltham, Massachusetts. Pete Wallace designed and developed the core product in his small business in a small Midwestern town last century, He changed Commercial Real Estate infrastructure management for the better, and he is missed.