MUNCIE, Ind. – Ball State University lost a major benefactor and a devoted friend Saturday, Sept. 30, when local businessman Edmund F. Ball, 95, died after a short illness.

Ball was a son of Edmund Burke Ball, one of the original Ball brothers, a group of five industrialists who purchased a private teachers college and turned it over to the state in 1918.

Over the decades, Ball and his family nurtured the small teachers college through a major depression, world war, and into a major growth period in the 1960s when the school became a university.

Even in his busy role as the top executive of the family-owned Ball Corp., a glass jar company that eventually became a Fortune 500 firm, Ball had played an instrumental part in the university's development. He was responsible for creating an endowed chair, expanding public broadcasting and allowing a family home to be used as an educational center.

Ball State President Blaine Brownell is saddened by the loss of a person he described as a friend, even though the two had spent only a short time together.

"Edmund Ball exemplifies the qualities that we like to associate with the university," Brownell said. "I associate him with remarkable vigor and a real love of life. He was always looking forward to the next great adventure.

"Mr. Ball had such a high quality of life," he said. "It is a sad occasion, but he was a remarkable man who lived a remarkable life. He moved three times faster than the rest of us."

Ball was honored many times by the university, receiving an honorary doctor of laws degree and the President's Medal of Distinction. The Edmund F. Ball Building, housing the university's public broadcasting operations and telecommunications department, was dedicated in 1988 in his honor.

It was telecommunications and, in particular, public broadcasting, in which Ball took great interest. He played a major role in the creation of the Public Broadcasting Corp. and the eventual development of WIPB-TV and WBST, Ball State's public broadcasting television and radio stations.

His devotion was recognized earlier this year when WIPB-TV produced "Ed Ball's Century," a narrative on local and world history through the eyes of a man who lived nearly 10 decades in the community. The film was also a biography of one of the two surviving members of the second generation of the Muncie industrialist family.

Nancy Carlson, a telecommunications professor who served as writer and executive producer of the television biography, remembered Ball as a remarkable and amazing individual.

"Ed Ball is representative of Muncie in the last century because of who he was and what he has done," she said. "He had an incredible memory and led such an interesting life."

He is survived by his second wife, Virginia, and their two children, Robert B. and Nancy L. Teed. Ball had three children from a previous marriage to Isabel, who died in 1949. They are Frank E. Ball and Marilyn B. Heaton and Fred C. Ball.

By Marc Ransford, Communications Manager

(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, contact Brownell at (765) 285-5555 and Carlson at (765) 287-0117.)