Henry Durrell Ball

Henry Durrell Ball, iconic comedian Lucille Ball's father "...was descended from landed gentry in England. ..Henry Durrell Ball ("Had" to family and friends) came to Missoula and signed on as a lineman for the phone company. In 1910 Had returned to Jamestown to visit his mother and sisters, and while he was there someone introduced him to the eighteen-year-old Desirée Evelyn Hunt, the daughter of a professional midwife and a man who had worked at a number of trades, including hotel management, mail delivery, and furniture construction. (She chose the Frenchified spelling; "Desire" was the name on her birth certificate.) The twenty-four-year-old Had qualified as an attractive older man. Several months later, on September 1, 1910, the two were married at the two-story gabled home of Frederick and Flora Belle Hunt. Some 140 guests witnessed the ceremony, conducted by the Reverend Charles D. Reed, pastor of the Calgary Baptist Church. It was the biggest social event of the season. Contemporary photographs show a pale, conventionally pretty young woman, and a husband so lean he appears to be two profiles in search of a face.

Laden with gifts of silver, linen, and furniture, the couple boarded a train and headed toward the sunset. They settled in the little town of Anaconda, Montana, about twenty-five miles from Butte. A couple of months later Desirée became pregnant. She expressed a desire to have the baby back home in Jamestown, where her mother could act as midwife. Had consented, and the couple went east in the summer of 1911. On August 6, Lucille Desirée was born.

Once Flora had pronounced her granddaughter fit for travel, the Balls returned to Montana-only to turn around and head back east. Securities Home Telephone had recently acquired the Michigan Telephone Company, and the company needed experienced linemen. The little family resettled in Wyandotte, outside Detroit, a town just far enough from the automobile industry to offer quiet tree-lined streets and clean air. Had regarded it as a fine place to raise a family, and pretty soon Desirée was pregnant again. Everything went well: Had was making five dollars a week, a good salary in those days, and the doctor said that Desirée was the ideal age and weight to bear a second child. As for little Lucille, she was an active, healthy youngster, fond of her mother and crazy about roughhousing with her father-she would scream with delight when he tossed her into the air and caught her inches from the floor.

All this was to change in the awful winter of 1915. In January, cases of typhoid fever were reported in the Detroit area. Public health officials warned citizens to boil their water and to stay away from unpasteurized dairy products. Desirée scrupulously followed their instructions. Had went along for a while, but in early January he treated himself to a dish of ice cream. A week later he began to suffer from sleeplessness, then intestinal problems, and finally he developed a fever of 104 degrees accompanied by delirium. Physicians made a grim diagnosis and nailed a sign to the Balls' front door: keep out-health authorities. Neighbors shut their windows and drew the curtains; there was no vaccine at the time. The family doctor could do little beyond making Had comfortable and preparing Desirée for the end.

Distraught and overburdened, she kept Lucille out of the sickroom and in the fresh air for hours at a time. To ease her mind she tied one end of a rope around the child's waist, the other end to a steel runner on the backyard clothesline. As long as she heard the metal squeal, Desirée knew that her little daughter was running like a trolley from the back of the yard to the front. Whenever the noise stopped for longer than a few minutes she ran outside to see if Lucille had slipped the knot. The three-and-a-half-year-old never did escape, but on at least one occasion she tried. After an ominous silence Desirée found her batting her eyes and negotiating with a milkman: "Mister, help me. I got caught up in this silly clothesline. Can you help me out?"

Had died on February 28, 1915. He was twenty-eight years old. Lucille retained only fleeting memories of that day, all of them traumatic. A picture fell from the wall; a bird flew in the window and became trapped inside the house. From that time forward she suffered from a bird phobia. Even as an adult, she refused to stay in any hotel room that displayed framed pictures of birds or had wallpaper with an avian theme.

Had's widow was twenty-two. She was five months pregnant, with a dependent child, little insurance, and no professional skills. Somehow she summoned the strength to make funeral arrangements in two cities: Wyandotte, where her late husband was embalmed, and Jamestown, where he was to be interred. In order to get a little peace, Desirée enlisted the aid of a sympathetic grocer. Six decades later, Lucille gratefully summoned up images of Mr. Flower: "He let me prance up and down his counter, reciting little pieces my parents had taught me. My favorite was apparently a frog routine where I hopped up and down harrumphing. Then I'd gleefully accept the pennies or candy Mr. Flower's customers would give me-my first professional appearance!" Those gifts came from customers who would rather donate money than pay condolence calls to a quarantined house.

Several days later Desirée and Lucille accompanied Had's body on the long train ride to upstate New York. On the chill, iron-gray morning of March 5, Had was buried at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown. Lucille looked on blankly, oblivious to the glances in her direction. At the last moment, as Had's casket was lowered into the grave, the loss suddenly hit home. The little girl was led away screaming to her grandparents' house on Buffalo Street in Jamestown. Mother and child had no other refuge. ..."

By STEFAN KANFER AUG. 3, 2003 Excerpted from Ball of Fire by Stefan Kanfer Copyright © 2003 by Stefan Kanfer

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/books/chapters/ball-of-fire.html

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Henry Durrell Ball was the father of actress Lucille Ball.* Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Sep 26 2020, 0:50:31 UTC