i want to believe that all the pain of loss we feel for those we love like this is a sign that it will not always be like this i fear sometimes it seems as plausible that it is a sign that it will never be more than this again... so there it is, my great lack of faith laced with rage a little... that things have to be this way. (okay, i'll add "for now" just to sprinkle a little powder sugar of hope on it all).
may i post your eulogy on my blog? it's very private there...nobody reads the stuff...but i hope maybe someday i'll write something worth reading... (okay THERE it is, the spoonful of self pity to stir into the coffee of grieving...just for a bit of flavoring)...
i will add this---it is a GLORIOUS friday morning of my spring break and i am outside on the patio loving the relative peace and quiet...with nothing more to do today than ignore and deny the impulse to work in the yard or clean the house while i indulge in the work of the novel about my father's family. got back last night from spending a week (well, since saturday) with the Ballard Bunch in Columbia!!! it was fabulous. all day with aunt dot telling stories and pouring over (is that the right "pouring"? or is there another spelling? bly me) the rough draft... so now i will move on into all of that and work the story...i suddenly saw the metaphor of kneading bread dough...man is it a workout!!! hopefully it will leaven properly, bake well, and feed everyone...
so is that a yes on posting your eulogy?
he responded "post away" so here is his eulogy...cut and pasted from his email...
2014 04 16 Jerry Ballard eulogy—Fred Alexander
Last month I spoke to a college class. In my hour and fifteen minutes, I covered only 5 of my 20 points, plus 3 things I thought of just before my talk began. And all this got lots of laughs, a few ah-sos, 2 ovations, and a professor who said she took some helpful notes. Good thing I gave everyone a detailed handout afterwards!
Driving home, I realized, if I believed it possible, I had been channeling Jerry Ballard. I was privileged to work with Jerry, frequently daily for about four years ending in 1977. I began working for him part-time, as a grad student at Columbia Bible College. That’s now Columbia International University. He was quite old when I met him, maybe 37 or 38.
When Jerry was on a creative roll—and he frequently was--he had amazing insights, great humor, a barely audible voice, illegible handwriting, and absolutely no sense of time.
I had never met anyone like him. Nearly forty years later, I still haven’t met anyone else like him.
With my background as a young Marine officer, Jerry thought I could help him meet deadlines. After creating a management system and working with him several months, I had to tell him our system wasn’t working very well.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because you are not a Marine and do not follow your own orders or my suggestions.”
Very quietly, he said, “I was afraid of that.”
I heard him deliver the message at a daily CBC chapel one time. Guess what his topic was? Time management. I know he struggled with it as a stewardship issue in our culture. But I don’t think he was ever quite convinced that our North American ways were always God’s ways.
He was the first person I’d met in full-time Christian work who was not a pastor, musician, or missionary. He was my model for how to be a committed Christian in a secular world. The Jerry I knew enjoyed the world that God created, but kept his heavenly loyalties. At work and as a family man at home, I saw him live with freedom and responsibility.
Professionally, he was my mentor. He would give me my own one-student seminar on how to write a letter, the graphics of communication, type selection, and communicating with senior leaders.
When he left CBC to found a Christian advertising agency in Atlanta, I succeed him as department head. With the president’s permission, I hired Jerry to do the creative work we needed. He was simply great and in his element—deciding what to do and say to reach a target audience. He could create the concept, words, and art—and I could get it produced on time.
Within a year, he hired me to join him in Atlanta. In the sovereignty of God, which often leaves us a bit humanly confused, Jerry was offered . . . and accepted . . . another job between the time I gave my notice and arrived with my very pregnant wife!
Frankly, years later I understood that the new ad agency owner was terrific and hired him twice for projects in WNC. But at this time, we didn’t understand each other well. I saw that my labor needed to be in another part of the vineyard and left. I certainly needed a job to support my wife and our one-month old son!
It seemed likely that I’d be working for a non-Christian organization. Now I wasn’t sure how to think about that and it made me uncomfortable. Jerry listened carefully and observed that “God doesn’t call most Christians to work in Christian organizations. I think He wants most of us to work where the people who need Him are--in the world.”
With Jerry, came Winnie—for whom many of us truly did thank God! I think Winnie consoled my new bride about living with a communicator. Diane was wondering why I could write all this stuff to reach hundreds or thousands, but couldn’t remember to tell her basic things, like when I was coming home or going out of town. “It’s the curse of the communicators,” I think Winnie said. “They can reach the masses, but they have trouble with individuals.”
Jerry was a world Christian. He told of sitting with a brother on the dirt floor of a hut in Africa or South America. Though they did not share a common language, they enjoyed each other’s company. Jerry said that was because they had the joy of having the most important thing in common, faith in Christ.
I saw Jerry as an insightful expert on parenting—at least one day, for a few minutes. While we talked before supper in his Atlanta den, fourteen year old Kim walked in with a request. There was a communications gap and some mutual frustration, which was fortunately shaded by an umbrella of love.
In the end, Jerry admitted communications defeat. And Kim was still a bit frustrated. To her, and perhaps to himself, he said, “You know Kim, the problem is I just became competent in being the father of a 13 year old girl and now you’ve turned 14 and changed some more. Now I need to start all over again! So bear with me.”
Finally, my mentor and friend taught me that genius does not think in ways I’ll ever understand; it is good that God made us different; and that friendship and love can transcend decades and debilitation.
I think the world is a dimmer place without Jerry Ballard and look forward to seeing him again someday through the hope we have in Our Lord Jesus Christ.
