Family and friends attend Mike Wallace’s burial in West Chop

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Chris Wallace remembered his father and welcomed participants at a burial service at the West Chop Cemetery Tuesday. — Photo by Ralph Stewart

Family and friends stood beneath a sun-dappled canopy of trees at Holmes Hole Cemetery on Tuesday to remember Mike Wallace, who died April 7 at his home in New Caanan, Connecticut, at 93.

Mr. Wallace’s storied career as a television journalist and a relentless investigator earned him widespread admiration. Tuesday, the talk ran to his tennis skills and capacity for friendship. It was the type of hot summer day Mike Wallace enjoyed over many years spent on the Vineyard.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Wallace, columnists Art Buchwald and James Reston, and novelist William Styron formed the core of a summer cadre that enjoyed tennis at the Vineyard Haven Yacht Club and long evenings together discussing politics, art, sports, and world affairs.

“Let me say, first of all, how grateful I and my family are that all of you showed up on the hottest day of the summer, to come here,” journalist Chris Wallace said, welcoming approximately 50 people to the gathering. The cemetery is on Main Street, half way between town and West Chop, and only a few hundred yards from Mr. Wallace’s summer home on Hatch Road.

Mr. Wallace said his father would have thought the service lovely and an element of what’s best of Martha’s Vineyard, “in the sense of community, and in the sense of formality, and the sense of family.”

Mr. Wallace said his father fell in love with the Island and continued to visit each summer for more than 40 years. “He loved this Island, he loved all of you, and he knew that all of you loved him,” he said.

Family members and friends helped bury a small wooden box of ashes in the West Chop earth.