Dr. Joseph Wallace, pioneer in OB/GYN practices; at 83

Like most new fathers in the 1940s and `50s, the young Boston doctor was barred from witnessing the births of his two daughters.

As a result, Dr. Joseph S. Wallace, an obstetrician and gynecologist, became an early advocate for the presence of fathers in hospital delivery rooms at Beth Israel Hospital, now Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he practiced more than 30 years.

``He felt it was wrong for fathers to be forced to wait outside," said Barbara Grossman of Newton, 58, his eldest daughter. ``It's just right for both parents to be there together."

Dr. Wallace, who also championed natural childbirth at a time when women were routinely given anesthesia, died Friday from heart failure at his home in Newton. He was 83.

He and his wife, Bernice, had just celebrated their 63 d wedding anniversary Tuesday , about two weeks after his last stay in the hospital. The couple met at a Harvard library, when she was a 17-year-old Radcliffe premed student and he a 19-year-old Harvard premed student. He was smitten by her tight, hot pink sweater, Grossman said, and asked her out. They married two years later, immediately after graduation.

The eldest of four boys, Dr. Wallace grew up in Mattapan and graduated from the Boston Latin School. After Harvard, he attended Boston University School of Medicine, where he graduated second in the class in 1946. He spent two years in the Army as a medical officer and then taught at Harvard and BU medical schools.

His daughters describe him as a renaissance man who could play musical scores on the piano after hearing them once at the theater. He painted seascapes and city scenes, including the old elevated T, from photographs and often from memory. There were nudes, ``all of whom seem to resemble my mother," Grossman said, and still lifes for his daughters' kitchens. He gave each of his seven grandchildren a painting of park scenes or playgrounds, signed ``Love, Papa Joe."

He loved french fries, veal parmigiana, frankfurters, strawberries, and Bass ale. He preferred following Red Sox games on the radio because he liked the color commentary. He wore tweed caps, cargo pants with lots of pockets for his keys and change, and bow ties with his suits.

He was a feminist who strongly believed in a woman's right to choose. In a statement he wrote about modern world affairs for his 50th reunion at Harvard College, he said, ``There's hope for the future. But it probably requires a woman president and a female majority of Congress."

In the late 1960s and early `70s, Dr. Wallace, a medical pioneer, opened a private mammography clinic but it failed because ``it was a good 15 years before mammograms became established as a way to detect breast cancer early," Grossman said.

She said her father had a sharp wit and had hundreds of jokes in his repertoire, which he told with a Yiddish accent, even recently from his hospital bed. He did not learn how to speak English until he reached grade school because he was raised by his grandmother, who spoke only Yiddish, while his parents ran a family grocery store.

He stayed trim by playing golf, and was proud of shooting an 82 last year and getting a hole in one twice in recent years. He walked 45 minutes every day in the corridors of his apartment, listening to talk radio on headphones.

Although he retired more than two decades ago, he avidly followed newspaper wedding announcements to see how many of the babies he once delivered were getting married.

In addition to his wife and daughter, he leaves another daughter, Ellen of Highland Park, Ill.; three brothers, Julian of Beverly Hills, Calif., and Eliot and Conrad, both of Boston; seven grandchildren ; and one great-grandson.

A funeral will be held today at 11 a.m. in Levine Chapel in Brookline. Burial will be in Sharon Memorial Park in Sharon.