THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 7, 1994 TAG: 9410070559
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
DATELINE: KITTY HAWK LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Wallace H. Kuralt died Oct. 6, 1994, at age 86 at Albemarle Hospital in Elizabeth City. His death was caused by cancer and respiratory failure, said a son, Charles Kuralt, of New York City.
Wallace Kuralt was a lifelong social work administrator remembered for his innovative direction of the Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) Department of Social Services from 1945 until his retirement in 1972. He started day care and child development centers and instituted family planning services long before these ideas became nationallly accepted. In August of this year, the Social Services building in Charlotte was named the Wallace Hamilton Kuralt Center.
Mr. Kuralt was born on Feb. 1, 1908, in Springfield, Mass. He was a 1931 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and afterwards a graduate student at the University School of Social Work. A professorship bearing his name was established at the School of Social Work in 1991.
Mr. Kuralt was married in 1931 to the former Ina Bishop of Jacksonville, N.C. Mrs. Kuralt died in 1991 at the couple's retirement home in Southern Shores on the North Carolina Outer Banks. They are survived by their three children, Charles, Wallace H. Kuralt Jr. of Chapel Hill, and Catherine Kuralt Harris of Bainbridge Island, Wash.; and by eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Early in his social work career, Mr. Kuralt was a field supervisor for the state Department of Public Welfare, a job that took him on regular visits to eastern North Carolina counties. He developed a fondness for the working people of the state and for the farms and swamps and country crossroads of the tidewater region. The family lived in Lumberton, Fayetteville, Stedman, Salisbury and Washington, N.C., during the 1930s and early 1940s.
During World War II, Mr. Kuralt served as an administrator of the federal Social Security Administration in Birmingham, Ala. and Atlanta, before returning to North Carolina to accept the Mecklenburg County position - Superintendent of the Department of Public Welfare, as the job was known then - in 1945. He soon established a reputation as an imaginative administrator with deep convictions about how to help welfare recipients escape the cycle of poverty and dependence. He was particularly persuaded of the value of early childhood education and of giving children a sense of their own worth and ability even before their kindergarten years. He testified before committees of the North Carolina General Assembly, the U.S. Congress and the United Nations. His office in Charlotte was visited and his methods studied by welfare administrators from such countries as India, Belgium and Switzerland.
Before his retirement in 1972, Mr. Kuralt was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by Davidson College, which cited his ``shaping imagination and unflagging energy'' and ``the loving care he bestows on everything he touches.''
Mr. Kuralt will be buried at the cemetery in Southern Shores. A graveside service will be held at 3 p.m. on Monday. The family will receive friends at Twiford Colony Chapel, Manteo, on Sunday, Oct. 9, from 3 to 5 p.m. Memorial donations may be made to the UNC Chapel Hill School of Social Work, Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514.
KEYWORDS: DEATH OBITUARY by CNB