Ernest Drinker Ballard; feminist & horticulturist (4 obits)
Hyfler/Rosner
Philadelphia Daily News
August 12, 2005 Friday
Ernesta Ballard, a 'treasure,' dies;
Pioneer in area feminist causes was 85
By JOHN F. MORRISON; mor...@phillynews.com
Ernesta Drinker Ballard was a Main Line socialite who
succeeded in freeing herself from a suffocating atmosphere
in which women were supposed to know their place to become a
prominent feminist and much-honored champion of many causes
of benefit to her native city.
Ballard died yesterday. She was 85 and lived in Cathedral
Village, a retirement facility in Upper Roxborough, but had
lived most of her adult life in a stone mansion on Crefeld
Street in Chestnut Hill.
Mayor Street said of her, "Philadelphia has lost a grand
lady, and an influential and respected leader whose lifelong
contribution to so many worthwhile cultural and civic causes
has greatly enhanced the beauty and vibrancy of our great
city."
"She was a real Philadelphia treasure," said Daily
Newscolumnist Jill Porter, who frequently wrote about
Ballard's activities.
Ballard was a 20-year member of the Fairmount Park
Commission and head of the Pennsylvania Horticultural
Society for 18 years.
Under her guidance, the Philadelphia Flower Show blossomed
in more ways than one and gained international prominence.
She founded Philadelphia Green, which turns inner-city
vacant city lots into gardens of vegetables and flowers.
She worked tirelessly to raise funds for the restoration of
the historic Fairmount Water Works and the Swann Fountain on
Logan Square.
As a founder of the Philadelphia chapters of the feminist
groups, the National Organization for Women and Women's Way,
Ballard was called the "godmother of Philadelphia feminism."
Strongly pro-choice, she was a founding member of the
National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.
She was a rock-ribbed Republican, but she nevertheless
worked for candidates of either party who supported abortion
rights and women's issues, not exactly Republican causes.
She even switched her registration to Democrat briefly to
vote in the primary election in 2002 for Edward G. Rendell
for governor because he supported abortion rights.
She ran unsuccessfully for the City Commission in 1983. The
Republican candidate for mayor that year, Charles F.
Dougherty, called her "a woman who is eminently qualified to
be in public office." But voters didn't agree.
She was a board member of the White House Project, founded
in 1998 with the goal of getting a woman elected president
by 2008.
She marched on Washington in 1970 to support the Equal
Rights Amendment to the Constitution.
She traveled to Nairobi to support women in the East African
nation, and led hiking expeditions to study plants in the
Pacific Northwest, to Maine and to the Caribbean.
She was the author of two books on gardening, and taught
retirees to create bonzai trees.
Ernesta Drinker came from a renowned Philadelphia family.
Her father, Harry Drinker, was a prominent lawyer, senior
partner of the firm of Drinker Biddle & Reath. Her mother,
Sophie Hutchinson Drinker, was also a feminist and author of
"The Story of Women in Their Relation to Music."
But her father was old-school and scoffed when Ernesta said
at the age of 13 that she wanted to be a lawyer, too.
She was raised in sumptuous circumstances in Merion. She
attended St. Timothy's Finishing School in Catonsville, Md.,
to be taught how to comport herself as a proper Main Line
lady.
She was the niece of Catherine Drinker Bowen, a famed
biographer (Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Adams and others),
and a great-aunt of hers was Cecilia Beaux, a well-known
artist whose work hung in the Ballard home.
Ernesta was the fourth of five children and had her "coming
out" as a debutante at 18. At 19, she married a handsome,
athletic, Rhodes Scholar and Penn law student named Frederic
L. Ballard Jr.
He was the grandson of the founder of the prestigious law
firm of Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll, where he would
spend his entire law career and become partner. He died in
2001.
Until Ernesta was 28, she lived that life of the proper Main
Line-Chestnut Hill matron, giving birth to four children and
tending the family manse.
One day when her husband joked that she was the
least-educated person he knew, she had a revelation. She had
to do something else with her life.
She enrolled in 1952 at the Pennsylvania School of
Horticulture for Women (now part of Temple University's
Ambler campus). After graduating she started her own
greenhouse business.
She once said in an interview that she was a little
embarrassed by her mother's feminism in those days. But
after reading Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique," she
came to appreciate what her mother had been up to.
In 1963, Friedan invited her to form a Philadelphia chapter
of the National Organization for Women.
The same year, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society was
looking for a director - a man, of course. But when Ballard
applied, she was offered the job at $2,000 less than her
male predecessor had been making.
She told the selection committee to forget it, and the
committee changed its mind. They gave her full salary and
she set about to transform the organization.
She took control of its annual Flower Show, invited amateur
growers to join, and turned it into a teaching tool.
She would zip around the show at the old Civic Center in a
yellow motor scooter to keep everything under control.
One of her proudest accomplishments was the creation of
Philadelphia Green, to bring gardens and pride to the inner
city.
In 1974, she persuaded the city to let the Horticultural
Society clear a cluttered, debris-strewn vacant lot at 49th
and Aspen streets in Mill Creek to plant a garden.
The garden, tended by neighborhood residents, attracted
national attention. National Geographicwrote about it, and
Charles Kuralt featured it on his "On The Road" TV show.
The movement spread from there.
She was working with women in prison in 1977, when she and
Lynn Yeakel, a Democrat who narrowly lost to Arlen Specter
in the 1992 Senate race, founded Women's Way, a fund-raising
group that supports women's organizations and feminine
causes. Ballard was the first chairperson of the board.
She served as a Fairmount Park commissioner from 1982 to
2002. A nominating panel recommended her for a vacancy on
the Board of Education in 1982, but then-Mayor William J.
Green did not select her.
Despite suffering a stroke on Easter Sunday this year and
being confined to a wheelchair, Ballard insisted on
attending a dinner at the Water Works, the restoration of
which she had struggled for years to attain.
"She was fighting to the end," said Yeakel. "After her
stroke, she was trapped in a disabled body, but she kept her
feisty personality.
"She really cared about helping women to succeed, to fulfill
their potential. She was a person who could get things done.
She would see a problem and tackle it. Her legacy is all
over the city."
When Ballard received the Gimbels Philadelphia Award in
1976, one of many honors she achieved over the years, she
told a crowd at the old Bellevue-Stratford:
"Feminism is a revolutionary movement - though not, of
course, a violent one - and its position today is quite
reminiscent of the position of the American Revolution 200
years ago."
She said Colonial Americans could not make changes
piecemeal, but had to "renounce their dependent status and
declare their liberty."
"Today," she said, "we feminists have taken that same
action. We have rejected gradualism and gone back to first
principles, the principle that all human beings are created
equal - equal in opportunity and equal in expectation."
She is survived by a son, Frederic L. "Rick" Ballard Jr.;
three daughters, Alice Ballard, Sophie B. Bilezikian and
Ernesta B. Barnes.
Services:Memorial service 10:30 a.m. Sept. 2 at St. Paul's
Episcopal Church, 22 E. Chestnut Hill Ave.
September 1, 2005
Ernesta Drinker Ballard, 85, Horticulturist and Feminist,
Dies
By WOLFGANG SAXON NY Times
Ernesta Drinker Ballard, who saved the Philadelphia Flower
Show and transformed it from a horticultural beauty show
into a spectacular international educational event, died
Aug. 11 at the Cathedral Village retirement community in
Philadelphia. She was 85 and formerly lived in the Chestnut
Hill area of Philadelphia.
The cause was complications of a stroke, her family said.
For 18 years, from 1963 to 1981, she was the executive
director of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. Early in
that period, the society's annual flower show, which began
in 1829 and eventually grew into the largest indoor flower
show in the United States was faltering, and a two-year
suspension was discussed. Mrs. Ballard argued that a
suspension might be fatal and instead changed the content of
the show, bringing it to international prominence.
An exhibitor herself, she directed the show for 17 years,
until 1981. She opened it to amateur growers and used it as
a teaching laboratory for a wider public. Last year's show
covered more than 30 acres with flower, garden and landscape
displays and competitions, and lectures, workshops and
cooking demonstrations. It drew more than a quarter million
visitors.
Under Mrs. Ballard's guidance, the event began to produce a
financial surplus, which she used to start the Horticultural
Society's community gardening program, Philadelphia Green.
That program, which turns vacant lots into vegetable gardens
and flower beds, became one of the largest such urban
greening projects in the nation.
Mrs. Ballard also played a leading role in saving public
monuments like the Swann Fountain on Logan Circle and
restoring the buildings and grounds of Philadelphia's
historic Fairmount Waterworks. She was a Fairmount Park
commissioner for 21 years, until 2002.
Ernesta Drinker was born into a distinguished Philadelphia
family, a daughter of a prominent lawyer, Harry Drinker, and
Sophie Hutcheson Drinker, a feminist and author. She was not
encouraged to attend college but graduated as an adult from
the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women (now part
of Temple University) in 1954, when she started her own
greenhouse business.
Mrs. Ballard was also known as the "godmother of
Philadelphia feminism." She was a founder of local chapters
of groups like the National Organization for Women and
campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion
rights.
"The Feminine Mystique" (1963) by Betty Friedan propelled
Mrs. Ballard toward feminism, and it was Ms. Friedan who
invited her to start the NOW chapter. She was also a
co-founder of Women's Way, a seminal Philadelphia
fund-raising group that supports an array of women's
organizations and causes.
Mrs. Ballard's husband, Frederic, a prominent lawyer and
former president of the American Bonsai Association, died in
2001. She is survived by their son, Frederic L. Jr., of
Bethesda, Md.; three daughters, Alice W. Ballard of
Philadelphia, Sophie B. Bilezikian of Scarsdale, N.Y., and
Ernesta Ballard of Ketchikan, Alaska; a sister, Cecilia D.
Saltonstall of Exeter, N.H.; a brother, Henry Drinker of
Bedford, Mass.; eight grandchildren, and five
great-grandchildren.
Philadelphia Inquirer
August 12, 2005 Friday
'One of the great citizens' of Phila.
BYLINE: By Rusty Pray; Inquirer Staff Writer
Ernesta Drinker Ballard, 85, who had faith in feminism long
before most people believed it existed, who defied
conventions and shattered glass ceilings, and under whose
direction the Philadelphia Flower Show became a world-class
event, died yesterday at Cathedral Village of complications
following a stroke.
Before moving into Cathedral Village, a retirement community
in Roxborough, in 1998, she had lived with her husband,
Frederic, and 500 houseplants in Chestnut Hill.
"She was one of the great citizens our city has had in
recent history," said Todd W. Bernstein, president of the
Fairmount Park Historic Preservation Trust, an organization
Mrs. Ballard helped found. "Her interests were never
passing. They were always a passion."
"Most of the things we do at the society and the success
we've had over the last 25 years are due to her," said Jane
Pepper, who was hired by Mrs. Ballard in the 1970s and in
1981 succeeded her as president of the Pennsylvania
Horticultural Society. "She left a huge legacy here."
As a Fairmount Park commissioner, Mrs. Ballard led numerous
beautification or restoration projects, at such sites as the
Swann Fountain at Logan Square and the Fairmount Water
Works.
She launched Philadelphia Green, a program that turns vacant
urban scrub land into gardens of vegetables and flowers.
Mayor Street issued a statement that listed her many
accomplishments and lauded Mrs. Ballard's life as being
"spent in the pursuit of the greater good."
"Thanks to her stalwart efforts and graceful elegance," his
statement concluded, "Philadelphia is a better place now and
for generations to come."
Mrs. Ballard fought for pay equity and sexual equality. She
was a founding member of the National Organization for Women
and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action
League.
She marched on Washington, lobbied for the Equal Rights
Amendment, and raised money for female candidates. She
traveled to Nairobi to support women in emerging nations.
She fought the Archdiocese of Philadelphia over teaching
Girl Scouts about birth control and alternative lifestyles.
Skateboarding at JFK Plaza was a fight not closely
associated with Mrs. Ballard but one that was close to her
heart. A few years back, she sided with skateboarders who
fought a city ban of their sport at the plaza, also known as
LOVE Park.
"She thought they were an asset," said daughter Alice. "She
loved working on that."
Few knew that Mrs. Ballard suffered for years from clinical
depression - until she started talking openly of her battle
with the affliction in 2000. She hoped her speaking out
would spur others, particularly elderly people, to seek
diagnosis and treatment.
Her long journey began in 1954. At the time, she was headed
nowhere - the youngest of her four children was in nursery
school, and she had no profession and no prospects. She
hadn't even gone to college.
"She used to say to me, 'I have gone directly from being
somebody's daughter to somebody's wife to somebody's mother.
I want to be somebody,' " her late husband recalled in 1976,
when his wife was about to receive the Gimbel Award.
That said, she took up the study of plants at the
Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, now Temple
University-Ambler Campus, because it was near her home. From
that modest beginning, she became one of the region's
leading feminists, horticulturists and community activists.
A tiny, soft-spoken woman with glasses and a shy smile, she
wore her gray hair straight, drawn back in a perfectly
plain, no-nonsense way. Her look was composed and full of
confidence, frankness and intelligence.
She was a socialite who sometimes shook the old guard with
her ideas.
"All my life I've been trying to run a balance," she said in
a 1998 Inquirer interview. "I'm trying to promote women at
the same time that I'm trying to be a member of society. I
don't want to be a radical way out there. I want to raise
people's consciousness in the greater community. And I can't
do that if I'm a radical; they're not going to listen to
me."
Mrs. Ballard came from a line of achievers. There are some
notable women in her family, which arrived in Philadelphia
before William Penn.
Her great-aunt Cecilia Beaux was a prominent portrait and
landscape painter; her aunt Catherine Drinker Bowen was a
biographer; her mother, Sophie Hutchinson Drinker, was a
serious thinker who wrote about women in music and other
subjects.
The fourth of five children, Mrs. Ballard as a girl enjoyed
the comforts of Main Line debutante life in Merion: old
money, maids and butlers, tennis, dating and parties. She
also had dreams of being a prominent lawyer, like her
father, Harry.
Her father, however, laughed at the notion.
"He just never took it seriously," she said. He further
undermined her self-esteem by criticizing her appearance.
And so, her academic career - and any professional career
she might have desired - ended when she graduated from St.
Timothy's finishing school in Catonsville, Md., married
lawyer Frederic L. Ballard Jr. in 1939, and settled down to
raise a family.
But after graduating from horticultural school in 1954, she
established Valley Gardens, a business that both fostered
and took advantage of what was then a growing interest -
greening the home. She also wrote two popular books on
plants, Garden in Your Houseand The Art of Training Plants.
In her own home, on Crefeld Street, she kept 500 plants that
required daily attention. Outside were a thousand more, some
of them in a Bonsai garden that was for a time a highlight
of local garden club tours.
In 1964, as Mrs. Ballard sought a "wider outlet" for her
administrative skills, she closed her thriving horticultural
business to head the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and
supervise its annual extravaganza, the Philadelphia Flower
Show.
She took charge of what was once described as "a somewhat
musty association of flora freaks," with four employees and
a budget of $70,000. Today, the Pennsylvania Horticultural
Society has more than 100 staffers and is a national leader
in urban greening.
"She sort of got on the road to her accomplishments when she
became executive director of the horticultural society," her
daughter said. "Before that, she was just our mom."
Mrs. Ballard also was heavily involved in feminist and civic
causes.
She was a founder of the local NOW chapter in 1967. She was
appointed to the Pennsylvania Commission on Women, helped
create the Women's Bicentennial Center, was named to head
the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, and was named
vice president of the Pennsylvania Women's Political Caucus.
She was deeply involved in Fairmount Park after being
appointed to the Park Commission in 1981. She chaired the
committee that drew a master plan for the park's future, and
she led a drive to raise $2.3 million to renovate Swann
Fountain.
Throughout her life, her circle of activity kept spreading.
In 1984, she was elected to the board of managers of the
Philadelphia Foundation; she was named chairwoman in 1991.
From 1989 to 1991, she was the chairwoman of the National
Abortion Rights Action League.
In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Ballard is survived by a
son, Frederic L. "Rick" Ballard Jr.; daughters Sophie B.
Bilezikian and Ernesta B. Barnes; a sister; eight
grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. Her husband
died in 2001.
Services will be at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 2 at St. Paul's
Episcopal Church, 22 E. Chestnut Hill Ave. Burial will be
private.
Contact staff writer Rusty Pray at 856-779-3894 or
rp...@phillynews.com
Philadelphia Daily News
A PHILADELPHIA ICON PASSES;
ERNESTA BALLARD WAS A CHAMPION FOR THE CITY'S WOMEN AND
PARKS
IT'S TELLING THAT the clippings of Ernesta Ballard's early
accomplishments are filed in this newspaper's library in the
same envelope as those of her late husband, Frederic.
In some of those stories, she is identified as "(Mrs.
Frederic Ballard)."
That's the way things were done in an era when women's
identities were tied to those of their husbands and no one
even dreamed of questioning it.
In the world to which Ernesta Drinker Ballard was born,
girls were "finished" in finishing schools, not educated,
lest they be warped and not make good wives. Few questioned
that, either.
Yet Ballard, who died yesterday at age 85, did question many
of the old conventions. In the process, she became a woman
of incredible accomplishments and opened doors to many
Philadelphia women who followed her into a new era.
A noted gardener, of course, she wrote several books on the
subject. As director of the Pennsylvania Horticultural
Society, she made the Philadelphia Flower Show the largest
in the world and created Philadelphia Green. An ardent
feminist and proponent of reproductive rights, she was a
founding member of the National Organization for Women;
co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League;
co-founder of Womens Way. She organized the restoration of
the Swann Fountain in Logan Square and in recent years, as a
member of the Fairmount Park Commission, spearheaded the
restoration of the Fairmount Water Works.
A true visionary, Ballard saw things others didn't - in
particular, how things could be different for women from the
way they were, and how to make those changes happen.
She saw for example, that want ads in newspapers need not be
segregated into "Male Wanted" and "Female Wanted." She saw
that the Union League need not be limited to men. She saw
that women could be hired at the same salaries as men.
Ballard saw that six organizations that aided women - the
Women's Law Project, Women Organized Against Rape, the
Elizabeth Blackwell clinic and others - need not compete
against each other for funding, but could join together and
form Womens Way, which garnered support from major corporate
contributors and has grown and continues to provide
essential services.
She saw that she could fight for her beliefs - for
reproductive rights, for the Equal Rights Amendment, for the
election of women to political office - while remaining
modest and civil and gracious.
Few Philadelphians have made such an indelible mark on this
city's environment, its culture, its future.
CORRECTION In an editorial Wednesday, we referred to Ron
White as Mayor Street's private attorney, based on a
characterization by the FBI special agent in charge of the
probe. White was a Street fundraiser, not his personal
attorney.