The South Carolina Seedsmen Association Seedsman of the Year Award for 2014 was presented to Owen Wallace with Dillon Seed & Supply in Dillon.
The award is presented annually to an individual that has “rendered outstanding service to the association and to the seed industry.”
Wallace was specifically chosen because  of his leadership and dedication to the seed industry at the state and national level.
Wallace was born and raised in Dillon County. Family records show that his great-great-great grandfather, William Lane Wallace, moved his family to the Hamer area before Dillon County was formed in 1910. Each generation of the Wallace family has been involved in farming and agriculture since the move to Dillon County.
Wallace graduated from Dillon High School in 1978 and headed upstate to Clemson University from 1978-1982 where he majored in Agricultural Economics.
While at Clemson, Wallace made the dean’s list for academics. He, also, made the dean’s list of housing and student affairs, but that is another story.
He served as Ag-Econ Club President at Clemson and, at the same time, was President of the National Ag-Econ Club and hosted that year’s convention at Clemson between his junior and senior years.
Wallace was on the Clemson Rifle Team where he lettered in the sport.
After graduating from Clemson in 1982, he went to work at Dillon Seed & Supply, the company his father, Osbourne Wallace, had started six years before. He began at the low end of the ladder, in the warehouse, later becoming a salesman, then as was needed, back into the warehouse and anything else that needed doing! In 2006 he became the buyer/manager.
Wallace has contributed to the community as well. He served 13 years as a volunteer fireman. He was the City of Dillon Fire Chief for four of these years.
He has served his church, Main Street United Methodist Church, as lay speaker and Sunday School superintendent, and has taught the E.L. Davidson Sunday School class for years.
He contributed many volunteer hours at Dillon Christian School on all kinds of projects, but most will point out he was responsible for building the football field … himself.
He served Dillon’s arts community by being in the Golden Land play in 1985, which was directed by his mother, Betty Wallace. Wallace played the Devil in that play; a role he was born to play.
In the agriculture community, Wallace has served at many positions: on the board of SC Seedsmen Association, as the Southern Field Seed Council President and as the Southern Seed Association President.
He married Natalie Williams of Westminster in 1983; their two daughters, McCall (a graduate of Clemson) and Lane (a graduate of Southern Wesleyan and Francis Marion Universities), both are now married.