My Portfolio

If I were  a super power:  (My definition of a super power--- someone with unlimited funds to share and unlimited abilities to get things done.) I would  fund Pre K and early childhood education throughout the US and other educational opportunities including all public educational facilities and maket universities free for...

To my nieces and nephews,   My Precious Memories   Someone once said, “The only lasting things you can give your children are wings and roots.”  It is with this thought in mind that I am writing to you about your grandmother Mattie Harper Ball.  She was born December 12,1911,  in...

The White Whale was my first car.  I bought it brand new from York Gary, who was the salesman at Ball Chevrolet in Nashville, AR, my hometown.   York was the father of my best friend Gloria.   It was not such a special car in the beginning.   It took...

  Home   The memory comforts me Home, a house set in a garden, abounding in seasonal colors and fragrances A mixture of old and new- wood, glass and trim The back yard-tall pines Fresh fallen pine needles Its essence, the purring of the attic fan On  a hot summer night...

My first memory of Valentine's Day is Fourth Grade.   My mother was a homeroom mother and that meant she was responsible for the Valentine Party in my class at school.   She took a hat box and decorated it for all the Valentines of all my classmates.   It was...

  Miss Ruth Hide Details FROM: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. TO: Tom Tirrell Message starred Thursday, January 31, 2013 2:20 PM Miss Ruth Price Sometime about 1950 when I was ten years old, a unique person came into my life. Like many of the good things that happened to me, this came about because...

My grandfather, the only grandparent I knew-  we called him Daddy Ball, was so very dear to me.   He lived in a shack about a mile or two out of McCaskill, Arkansas, in Hempstead County, Redland Towhship, near where I was born.   I knew him from the time I...

  It is The Great Depression.   It is rural Redland Township, Hempstead County, Arkansas.   Crops have been planted and are coming up.   They look promising.  Cotton and corn.    Soon word comes from the federal government of new programs of how to deal with the overabundance of crops...

    Uncle Joe        Uncle Joe  was the seventh son born to Thomas Frederick and Mary Ellen Ball on January 10, 1912.   His birth name was Joe Vell Ball.   Of all the seven Ball brothers and the youngest one, Uncle Joe was the tallest.  He probably...

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Wait Until Dark My favorite black/white movie is Wait Until Dark, with Audrey Hepburn.    I first saw it when I was living in Louisville, Kentucky in the early 1970’s.   I had an old tv that my friend Pat Elliott had given me.   It was pretty pitiful, but I could see fairly...

Our family had a close relationship with the Price family from as early as I can remember, but the relationship became much closer when my sister Jean became a caregiver (a word we didn't use in the 1950's) for Mrs. Ramage.  She sat with Mrs. Ramage after school (after Anna, the...