Wally was recruited to the Economic Round Table by Durward Howes when he was 32 years old. He became the second President of ERT the following year – in 1933-34.

Wally was born in Ashland, Wisconsin, in 1900. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Engineers and went to France to fight in World War One with the Expeditionary Force. He emerged unscathed and, when he came home, decided to move across coun­try to Los Angeles to attend CalTech. After two years of technical study, he decided to broaden his education and went up north to Stanford University. He graduated with a BA in 1922.

He returned to Los Angeles and went to work downtown as an appraiser for the Mortgage Guaranty Corp, In 1926, he married Phyllis Elizabeth Kemp of Los Angeles. The following year, at the age of 27, he went out on his own, becoming President of a company known as Investment Group Corp. After the crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression, Wally realized the returns in the investment business were going to be pretty slim for quite a while. So, he copied Howard Ahmanson. He went into the insurance business, becoming a correspondent for The John Hancock Company.

Later, Wally opened his own mortgage banking enterprise, the Wallace Moir Company, out in Beverly Hills. He took offices on El Camino Drive, just next to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Wally was a longtime supporter and activist for the Republican Party. He was also a member of the University Club and the Santa Monica Beach Club.