RIP

Dennis Ballou was born December 18, 1931, in Tallulah Falls, Georgia, and moved to Macon with his family in his early teen years. He graduated from Lanier High School in 1949, with a naval scholarship to Georgia Tech. After one year at Tech he won an appointment to the Naval Academy, graduating in the top of his class in 1954. That summer he married Jennie Wilkie Frost, who had gone to Miller. After serving on a surface ship out of San Diego, he went to submarine school in Connecticut and upon graduation was sent to Pearl Harbor, where he entered nuclear submarine service in the time of the Cold War. The Navy then sent him to graduate school at Webb Institute, the prestigious college for naval architecture and marine engineering, where he graduated in the top of his class. His first job in his new role as an engineering officer was at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, where he was a superintendent of submarine building. From there he moved on to Newport News, Virginia, where he was a supervisor of ship building, and then he moved on to the Washington, D.C., where he assumed a managerial role at the Naval Ship Engineering Center. Then it was back to Portsmouth for an engineering manager’s role in the planning of repairs for submarines. Around this time he was elected a lifetime member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers for his contributions to the field, including at least a dozen published engineering papers. After two years, at the rank of Commander, he retired from the Navy and, with Jennie and his five children, moved to Athens, Georgia, to start law school at the University of Georgia. After graduation he practiced law in Athens for a couple of years, and then headed to Atlanta, where he assumed the chief position for engineering and construction of the Marta rail program. In early 1985 the Georgia General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing Dennis’ contributions to the rail program, noting that in his five years with Marta he had opened a complex of new rail line and stations one year ahead of schedule and $150 million under budget. He left Marta in 1985, and for the next four years held the chief job for building the light rail system in Singapore. Dennis and Jennie enjoyed living in Southeast Asia and traveled often in that part of the world. Upon return to the U.S., Dennis worked for the Fulton–DeKalb Hospital Authority, leading hospital expansion work, and he also taught engineering courses at Georgia Tech. He would go on to teach, for several years, over a dozen courses in the School of Mechanical Engineering, many times over. He was awarded “Most Inspirational Teacher” one year by the school. Additionally, he returned to Singapore over a number of summers to teach engineering and construction law at Nanyang Technological University. An avid tennis player well into his retirement years, he also enjoyed hiking and whitewater canoeing, especially in the mountains of northeast Georgia. But perhaps—beyond the outdoor life and family and friends—it was the life of the mind that really captured his attention and imagination. Dennis never gave up being a dedicated student, and he read often, widely and deeply in many fields. He had an impressive library, and he loved to talk about the books he was reading as well as the books others were pursuing. An engaging and reliable conversationalist, he relished the dialectic as well as any conversation. He loved poetry and enjoyed reciting countless poems. A man of great integrity who lived in an inspired condition, he noted near his end that he was simply “an engineer, lawyer, and teacher in the service of mankind, who tried to do my duty as God had given me the gifts to do that duty.” He is survived by his second wife, Kathleen Peeples Ballou, and his five children, all from his first marriage—Elizabeth, Robert, Richard, David, and Ann—as well as nine grandchildren: Sarah, Rachel, Libby, Wren, Annie, Julianne, Adrienne, Matthew, and Jack. He’s also survived by his one sibling, Robert Earl Ballow.