Dr. Duane Wallaker is a native of Kenyon, Minn.

He is the son of a U.S. Postal Service rural letter carrier. His mother was a homemaker.

He is the oldest in a family that includes two brothers and a sister.

He entered the U.S. Navy after graduating high school and served a three-year hitch before being honorably discharged.

Near the end of his enlistment, Wallaker met a friend and asked him what advice he had for life after the Navy.

“He asked me if I had ever considered professional optometry,” Wallaker recalled. “I wasn’t aware at all of optometry, so when I had a chance I went to the downtown Jacksonville (Florida) city library and researched optometry and what was required to become an optometrist.

“The more I read the more interested I got,” he said.

When his Navy tour ended, Wallaker took pre-optometry courses at a Jacksonville university.

Eager to be accepted at a Chicago college of optometry, Wallaker took extra courses and completed the pre-optometry course work in three years, while attending classes 12 months of the year.

He was accepted by the Chicago university and began his formal studies there en route to a degree in optometry in January 1953.

Six months later, he obtained his license to practice optometry medicine in Minnesota.

“I was looking for a practice to buy and one of them was in Austin,” he said.

That practice was owned by Dr. Frederick Bromley, who was retiring.

Wallaker purchased Bromley’s practice and moved into his office in the former Austin State Bank building along North Main Street Jan. 1, 1954.

Through the next 54 years, Wallaker moved his practice in the city, but never left Austin.

Two years ago, Dr. Jeffrey Anderson acquired Wallaker’s practice.

The Anderson practice is located in the former Schaub (later Hecimovich) chiropractic clinic building at 200 14th St. N.W. (now called Family Eye Care Center).

“Contact lenses were not that popular when I began practice here in the 1950s,” he said of optometry in Austin over a half century ago. “As far as glasses were concerned, all of us, when we reach a certain age, we get to the point where we need corrective lenses.

“Children develop eye problems that get detected when they’re in school and they were a part of my practice,” he said. “What I’m doing now is more complicated and the equipment we’re using is more sophisticated today.”

Another change was the advent of diagnostic and therapeutic drugs.

Commercial optometrists along North Main Street and in discount stores made their debut in the Austin business world and that increased competition for professional optometrists such as Wallaker.

As Wallaker’s client list grew older, he accommodated their needs, moving to a street-level location.

Wallaker remained a solo practitioner throughout the years.

“I’ve always enjoyed the practice of optometry,” he said. “It has never been my intent to get wealthy from it.

“I’ve made a very comfortable living practicing optometry and that’s all I needed,” he said.

Wallaker has two children: a son, Mark, deceased, and a daughter, Cynthia, who lives east of Faribault. He and his wife, MaryLou, have been married 31 1/2 years.

In their leisure time, the Wallakers enjoy attending the Austin Artist Series concerts.

They are both members of the St. Olaf Lutheran Church Choir — Duane for more than 50 years.

Selling his practice and remaining on staff two days a week has helped Wallaker make the transition to retirement.

Wallaker said he made the right decisions to become an optometrist and to come to Austin.

“It was a very good choice for me to become an optometrist,” he said. “When I was younger I had in mind to go to college after the military service, but that’s all. I really didn’t know what I wanted to be in life.

“When I read about optometry, I liked it and it appealed to me,” he said. “I felt very directed to go into that profession.”

Coming to Austin was a business decision: An optometry practice was for sale and Wallaker acquired it to begin his career.

That, too, was a smart decision.

“We plan to remain in Austin. We have no plans to move away,” he said.

He likes, firstly, the people, but also the city’s size and proximity to other places as well as his beloved St. Olaf Lutheran Church.

“There are so many pluses to living here in Austin,” Wallaker said.

Not the least of which is the man and his wife.