Wallace Davis Malone Jr.

Wallace Davis Malone Jr. died on Sunday, 25 October 2026, at the age of 90, with his wife holding his hand. His family thanked his caregivers, CareFirst Home Care and ACG Hospice. No cause of death was made public.

His death was announced in an obituary through Glover Funeral Home of Dothan and reported by WTVY, AL.com and Yellowhammer News. He was predeceased by his parents and his sister, Roberta Malone Henderson, and survived by his wife, Ocllo Smith Malone, six children, 17 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

A memorial service was scheduled for noon on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, at First Baptist Church of Dothan, with Dr. Taylor Rutland officiating, followed by a private burial at Dothan City Cemetery. The family asked for gifts to First Baptist Church of Dothan in lieu of flowers.

Wallace Davis Malone Jr. was born in Dothan, Alabama, the son of Wallace D. Malone Sr. and Alice Mae Dee Malone, and grew up on the family farm. His grandfather and father were bankers, and his father also pursued farming and travel. One of Malone's fondest memories of his father was a road trip they took with friends from Dothan all the way to Alaska and back in the late 1940s. He was close to his many Dothan cousins throughout his life.

As a teenager he served as a congressional page in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Dothan High School, earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Alabama, and took an MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Malone joined the First National Bank of Dothan in 1959, following his father and grandfather into the family bank. In 1971, while leading the bank, he was appointed to the board of directors of the Birmingham Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

In 1972 he helped establish a bank holding company that combined First National Bank of Dothan with three other Alabama banks. It had about 500 million dollars in assets at its founding and became SouthTrust Corporation. Malone served first as president and in 1981 was elected chairman and chief executive officer, guiding the company through more than three decades of growth.

Under his leadership SouthTrust became a Fortune 500 company with more than 53 billion dollars in assets, more than 700 banking locations across nine states and about 12,500 employees. By 2004 it ranked among the 20 largest bank holding companies in the United States. That year SouthTrust merged with Wachovia, which was acquired by Wells Fargo in 2008.

Malone counted SouthTrust's people and culture as his proudest achievement. He believed in hiring talented people, setting high standards and building a workplace where employees could thrive.

His business leadership earned him induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor, the Alabama Business Hall of Fame and the Birmingham Business Hall of Fame. He served on many charitable, educational and civic boards, including Troy University, Samford University, the Eye Foundation Hospital, Baptist Health System of Birmingham, the University of Alabama Health Services Foundation, UAB Health System, the Salvation Army Advisory Board, Boy Scout councils in Alabama and Florida, and the United Way.

In 1978 Malone married Ocllo Boykin Smith of Mobile, Alabama. Friends joked that the marriage was a merger, as both families had long histories in business. They were married for 48 years, travelled widely together and raised six children. She accompanied him through his career, meeting presidents, members of Congress, fellow chief executives and SouthTrust staff across the Southeast.

His family remembered him as home for dinner most evenings even in his busiest years, closely involved in his children's education and careers, and fond of hands-on projects such as installing a satellite dish or his own sprinkler system. After more than four decades in banking he returned to his agricultural roots on his farm in Campbellton, Florida, clearing land and mending fences himself. Known as Opa to his grandchildren, he was a keen skier who led annual family ski trips, and he enjoyed bird hunting and travel. He was a faithful supporter of First Baptist Church of Dothan and Mountain Brook Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Malone is remembered as one of the defining figures of Southern banking in the late twentieth century, the man who turned a small Dothan bank into the core of a regional institution that ranked among the largest in the country before its merger with Wachovia. Former employees continued to speak of SouthTrust's workplace culture long after his retirement, and through The Malone Family Foundation and his many board roles he supported education and health care in Alabama.