Henry Ball
But once that book actually started being written, it really wasn’t so much about me, it was about my mother, and her journey and her struggle and, and, you know, the adversities that she faced, and, and there was a, you know, the thing that happened within our family, that that kind of led me or motivated me to, Okay, I gotta go ahead and write this down. And, and, in fact, and I didn’t mention this when I mentioned, the Bleacher Report, but I’ve written other articles for trade magazines, and, you know, I’ve been published in, you know, magazines and things of that nature, nothing, you know, nothing huge or major but, but I’ve been published a few times.
And so I started to write an article, which turned into, you know, the book. And so, so I guess I’ll just tell you that story real quick, just a brief version of it. So one of the things that the book is about is that my mother had a, a another child that we never knew about, in fact, my, that I’m the youngest of six. So So I grew up in a household of six children. Well, we come to find out when I was 42 years old, I think 42 or 43, my mother kind of Finally, you know, told her deep, dark secret, which is that she placed a child for adoption, who would have been the middle child.
So, so I was like, wait a minute, you know, there’s, you know, there’s some things here that I need to know, there’s a story here that I need to know. And, and long story short, you know, my mother was forthcoming about, you know, the fact that, you know, she had this child, I actually reached out to and found my sister, my other sister, my oldest sister now lives with her together in Seattle, Washington, they’re like, they’ve been together their whole life.
But, but so she’s a part of our family now. And, and she should have been for much longer, because she reached out to my mother back in like, 1992 when I was 22 years old. And, and they had a relationship for, you know, like, 18 years writing cards and letters to each other and talking to each other. And, and she wanted to know her siblings very badly, but my mother kind of made her promise that she wouldn’t tell us that she would let my mother tell us herself.
And she kept saying, well, I’ve got to get all my kids together, which was kind of a pipe dream. I mean, we’re all over the country. So we weren’t really going to be in the same room. And by the way, we’re all fully grown. So you know, so, you know, I was like, Mom, you know, why didn’t you tell us this way back when, you know, and, and, and, and so then the other issue was that my sister wanted to know about her father, because her father is not my father, her father, you know, is it was was a different person, which is kind of part of the story.
But my mother wouldn’t really tell us much about him, other than he came from a powerful family and she was scared that it would be you know, that they would try to protect, you know, him and his legacy or whatever. And, and So I, you know, I kind of, you know, jokingly asked my mom, mom, who did you sleep with john F. Kennedy. I mean, you know, you, you don’t want us to know this deep, dark secret, but you know, we need to we’re adults will, will then come to find out, the gentleman passed away, like 30 years ago.
And, you know, it was really just this thing in my mom’s head that he’s from, from back then his family had a little, you know, his family was rich, and, you know, powerful in the, you know, in the Baton Rouge area. So, to her, he was some big, powerful man that they would try to protect, but she didn’t really tell us all of this at the time. And so I’ve just, you know, just made contact with my long lost sister, you know, found out that my mother who’s been keeping this secret for, you know, 45 years now, almost 50 years, is still not willing to open up about certain aspects of it.
So, so and then the other element is, is that, you know, with the adoption of my sister, I had been through the adoption process, my wife and I have a six year old that we adopted, and but we had been through, like, some really, you know, harrowing experiences trying to adopt, we had gone through five years, three matched adoptions that fell through, and, you know, just just some real heartbreaking stuff.
And, and, you know, I can tell you the story about my son at another time, but, you know, he’s, he’s kind of our miracle, you know, at the end of that process, and, and so I was going to write an article about adoption with my sister, my experience, so on and so forth. But I started with my mother’s experience, all the way back with my first sister, my mother had gotten pregnant in high school, she was, you know, she was 16, when she got pregnant, she was 17, when she had my sister, this was back in 1957, when it was not acceptable.
She was going to be the valedictorian of her class, but she literally had to drop out of high school six weeks before graduation, because of the pregnancy. And so that really shaped, you know, a lot of her life. And, and a lot of her potential was blunted because of that. And so that’s really where sister of sorrows starts, but then goes through kind of a, you know, like, you know, the somewhat remarkable history of our family.
And, and I personally think it’s, it’s turned into a very, as you would say, lovely book, and a lovely story. And, and so that’s kind of, that’s kind of where my writing came from. Now, I have also written not quite ready to publish the sequel to sister of sorrows, which is sons of sorrow, which is really my story, it kind of picks up where sister of sorrows left off with, you know, me as a teenager, and then kind of, you know, goes through my journey, you know, through my childhood into adulthood, and kind of a coming of age, and then the transformation of my life and, and, you know, kind of brings us to where we are today.
Emma Dhesi 13:35
It’s an amazing story. I thought for a second you were going to say that it was JFK.
Henry Ball 13:42
So you have to read the book, um, he, the person is, is is not. So it’s a fictional memoir. Right. And, and so, the names of, you know, the lay people, my family, you know, most people involved have been changed. You know, I say, to protect the innocent, and some were guilty, too.
But there are some public figures in the book whose names haven’t been changed, like for one, Billy Cannon, who is a very famous football player back in the 50’s and 60’s, a hero to the state about to the state of Louisiana. And in a friend of my friend of my father’s he, several years after his football career when he was a successful orthodontist in Baton Rouge, and just an absolute hero to the whole state of Louisiana, became embroiled and was the ringleader of the largest counterfeiting scheme in the in the history of the country.
And my, my father was an unindicted co conspirator. if you will. That counterfeiting scheme, the counterfeiting scheme itself, and Mr. cannon is, you know, public record. But my dad’s involvement, my dad was the one person that wasn’t indicted and wasn’t, you know, prosecuted because nobody really knew much about his involvement other than Mr. Cannon and my father. Um, and, and so I kind of go into the details of that.
But one of the things about Mr. Cannon is, you know, he was when the counterfeiting scheme happened, Sports Illustrated, ran an article and called him a counterfeit hero. And he lost, you know, he had won the Heisman Trophy back in 1958. So they took away the Heisman Trophy, he was removed from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he was removed, you know, from the College Hall of Fame.
So, I mean, this man, you know, was at the absolute pinnacle of, you know, his sports and, you know, hero, his home and, you know, Celebrity, and he fell, you know, to the absolute bottom, went to prison. And then he, you know, he made a long journey back to respectability. And shortly before my father’s death, the ESPN ran a program on Outside the Lines called the redemption of Billy cannon.
And, and, you know, so it kind of showed how he had, you know, face the music, and pay the price for his mistakes, and had really climbed back to respectability. And, and by the time he passed away, I think a little more than a year ago, or a year and a half, something like that, but he had regained his status, really, as you know, one of the great heroes of the state of Louisiana.
And so, you know, the book kind of goes through that. But there was also, you know, a huge impact on our family. This all happened when I was, you know, 10-11-12 years old. And, and these things also took place, when we lived in Louisiana through some of the, you know, greatest flooding and storms, you know, in the States history. And so, you know, part of the book, and part of that time in my life was how our entire life really got washed away, we, you know, our home, our home was flooded literally up to the ceilings, and, and, and had to be gutted and rebuilt.
And we walked on concrete floors for two and a half years, because that’s how long it took to actually rebuild our house after this flood, and we lost everything. I mean, I lost most of my clothes. And, you know, I had one pair of shoes for, you know, most of my childhood and they were two sizes too small for me. And, and, and so, you know, we kind of lost everything in that sense.
But we also lost everything in the sense that my dad really lost himself. I mean, he became a very violent alcoholic and, and, you know, unlike Mr. Cannon, unlike Billy Cannon, he never really climbed back to respectability, he never really made it out. And I know I hate that. I mean, it says, Son, I love my father. And I, you know, and I tried to be a good son as I grew up, but but he he left behind a pretty bad legacy.
And, and the one thing that you’ll take from my book, and it’s one thing that has really guided me in my life, I’ve always used my father as an example of what not to be, or an example of who not to be. And and it’s, it’s kind of sad that that’s the best thing that I can say about my dad, but it’s left with me, the the determination that I will never be like that. And my six year old son will always grow up knowing that he had a father who really loved him, and who was there for him no matter what.
And so, um, so, you know, sometimes, you know, it’s strange how good comes from adversity, but that’s, you know, that’s how, you know, good came from that situation?
