Dr. Wally Carroll of Oakdale is a modern Renaissance man.
The physician, an allergist with Sutter Gould Medical Center, also is an accomplished painter, a longtime surfer, a community health advocate, a collector of books, photographs and old fountain pens, an eBay trader, a British car enthusiast and a gentleman rancher. He also is a husband of 41 years and the father of three creative, successful adult children.
And his faith in God is the tapestry of his life, weaving together the threads of his many interests.
In plain English, the doctor is a fascinating man of faith.
"I think I'm learning all the time," he said. "I'm learning about horses and how to care for them and train them. I love to do that. British cars are a learning experience. Missions is a learning experience. Medicine is the ultimate learning experience. I read quite a bit and tend to read nonfiction and about applying my faith in the world."
Indeed, his faith is a hands-on kind of thing. He and his wife, Lydia, have taught Sunday school for 20 years to fifth- and sixth graders. This year, they challenged their students to memorize Scripture. In return, the Carrolls recently took 21 of the youngsters to Cowell's Beach in Santa Cruz to introduce them to surfing.
"It was really, really fun, watching them caught up by it, catching a wave and standing up," Carroll said.
Surfing has long been a family tradition.
"I've surfed since I was in the eighth grade," Carroll said. "I had an old balsa wood surfboard. I loved to experience the power of the ocean, and I've done it ever since. On my 60th birthday in 2006, my son and I went to Costa Rica for a longboard contest. We didn't take any medals or anything; there were some tremendous professional surfers there. But we had so much fun together."
His son, Ryan, is 37 and a pediatrics critical care specialist in Chicago who travels to Africa to research and treat children with cerebral malaria. The Carrolls also have two daughters -- Cristina, 32, an artist married to a science professor in Fresno; and Kelly, 30, a nurse practitioner in Denver who, with her physician husband, plans to do missionary work in the Middle East.
Carroll was born in Oakland and moved to Cupertino, where he graduated from high school. He met Lydia, a nursing student from Chicago, when she came to California for the wedding of her college roommate. The two were married in 1969.
Carroll was working on his master's degree in biology when he began thinking about medical school. Because it was tough to get into those programs in the early 1970s, he and a buddy decided to apply to medical school in Guadalajara, Mexico.
"It was quite a challenge," Carroll said. "I didn't know Spanish hardly at all and found myself just struggling. Everything was in Spanish, including the exams and the lectures."
But he persevered and went on to an intern program at the University of California at Irvine and then to a pediatric residency program in Fresno.
"Lydia and I were hoping to go into missions," he said. "We were going to do a six-week rotation in Africa, but it fell through at the last minute."
Instead, he did a six-week stint at Stanford University's children's hospital, where he was offered a post-doctoral fellow in allergy and immunology. That eventually led him to Gould, as it was known in 1982.
"I was the first allergist to join them," Carroll said. "The whole Central Valley has a great deal of allergies. May is the peak season for springtime allergies. In San Francisco, the amount of allergy grass pollen is 30 pollen grains per cubic foot of air per day. In Modesto, it's 7,000 on the same day."
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