By Harry Minium
Stephen Ballard has been at his desk for hours, lap top open and cell phone to his ear, jawing with subcontractors, suppliers, architects and construction managers.
It’s 2 p.m. on July 26, six weeks before Kornblau Field at S.B. Ballard Stadium is to open. Ballard, the founder and owner of S.B. Ballard Construction, is talking with a supplier from the west coast when I walk into a ramshackle house on 49th Street Old Dominion University loaned him.
Workers dubbed it “the White House” once Ballard began working here daily in late June.
“You promised they’d be here by now,” he says of some electrical components. The supplier replies that they might not be there until Aug. 30, the day before the Kornblau Field at S.B. Ballard Stadium is scheduled to open.
He hangs up and turns to me and says, “I told her the stadium is named for me. I’ve used that shtick 100 times and it always works.”
Stephen Ballard has a ton of ODU football gear in his Virginia Beach office.
For once, it doesn’t.
Ballard makes some more phone calls and does some internet searches and discovers his west coast supplier is a fan of a well-known pop music star. I don’t ask how he mined that gem of information.
He then acquires four choice tickets to a concert to be given by her favorite musician and emails them to her.
She emails him minutes later: “You’re making my job really difficult.”
Regardless, the fixtures arrive in Norfolk days later.
Ballard is well known as a wheeler and dealer and a demanding boss who can turn on the charm, as well as his temper -- anything it takes to get a project done on time.
It was imperative from the start that this project open as scheduled. Tearing down most of an old stadium and rebuilding it from scratch generally takes 18 to 24 months.
But ODU couldn’t afford to miss a football season. The University had to have this project done in nine months.
And Ballard delivered.
The stadium was turned over to ODU late Wednesday and will open its doors for the first time Saturday night at 7 p.m. when the Monarchs host Norfolk State.
“Steve does whatever it takes to get a project done,” said W. Sheppard Miller III, a Norfolk businessman and prominent ODU donor. “And this project is special to him.”
This is the signature project of his 40-year career, which includes building ODU’s Chartway Arena and Education Building, MacArthur Center and the Virginia Beach Pavilion.
Decades from now, long after Ballard and the rest of us are gone, ODU fans will be attending games in the stadium Ballard built.
ODU’s stadium is named for a self-made man, who 40 years ago began Ballard Construction with a pickup truck, ladder and tool box. He’s perennially ranked among the most influential people in Hampton Roads by Inside Business.
Video of S.B. Ballard Stadium construction
He’s built a mammoth house on the Lynnhaven River in Virginia Beach and enjoys time in his sprawling condo in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
“Stephen is a workaholic,” says B.J. Ballard, his wife of 38 years. “But he knows how to enjoy a good time.”
I’ve known Ballard for two decades and I’ve seen another side of him he prefers others not see.
He’s suffered the cruelest blow that a parent can endure and he and B.J. channeled that hardship into helping others. He taught adult Sunday school classes for nearly a decade at Norfolk’s First Presbyterian Church.
Ballard has been on site at S.B. Ballard Stadium for most of the summer..
He’s a product of blue-collar Norfolk and never forget his roots, or the plight of those less fortunate. In short, he’s a generous guy.
“Sometimes that works against him,” B.J. said. “He’s got such a big heart that people know if they ask, he’ll give them anything.”
Darrell Polokonis, who has been with Ballard Construction 38 years, says that when a worker had to take time off for surgery last year, Ballard wasn’t obligated to pay him.
“But Steve Ballard paid him for six months until he was able to come back,” Polonokis said. “That’s what kind of guy he is.”
Ballard grew up in Colonial Place in a family of athletes. His older brother, Wally, was a star quarterback at Maury High who led the Commodores to a 31-0 victory over Norview in 1970 at Foreman Field. I was a linebacker at Norview and even though he helped humiliate me and my teammates, Wally and I were friends.
A few years younger than Wally, Stephen was also a quarterback but rarely played. “I made the mistake of dating a coach’s daughter,” he said jokingly.
True or not, his destiny wasn’t in athletics, at least not on the playing field.
He briefly attended ODU before setting out to make his fortune. At first he did small renovations for the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority. By then, he and B.J. were engaged.
“He told me he’d like to start his own business,” she said. “I said go for it.”
Polokonis was walking through a lumber yard shortly after Ballard Construction was founded and asked some guys shoveling sand if they knew anyone was hiring. They told him to go talk to Ballard. He did and Ballard hired him at $4 at hour as a laborer.
Polokonis found Ballard to be a taskmaster who demanded much but rewarded hard work and loyalty. By the end of the year, his pay had doubled.
Kornblau Field at S.B. Ballard Stadium is a much nicer facility than was Foreman Field.
Miller, a classmate of Ballard’s at Maury and a former chair of the NRHA, said Ballard demands a lot of his employees.
“He’ll put pressure on his guys and beat them up, love them and beat them up some more," he said "But at the end of the day, they all celebrate together.”
Speaking of loyalty, Mark Payne, Rick Potter and Wayne Barrett have also been with Ballard for at three decades or more.
Ballard prospered when he turned to concrete work and by the late 1980s had 813 employees and was doing business up and down the east coast.
Then came the recession in 1990 and 1991, one that hit the construction industry especially hard. “I thought we were going to go out of business,” Ballard said.
He said the bank called in his notes and that he hid key equipment so it could not be repossessed.
“I went to all the meetings with him to the bankers,” B.J. said. “I knew he would survive. He was the type of person who was always going to get in there and do what he had to do in order to get it done.”
He did, landing a huge job for the Ford Motor Company that allowed him to pay his creditors.
ODU's new football stadium includes nearly 16,000 new seats, all with back support.
He downsized, shedding the concrete business, and has since stuck with general contracting. He now has about 130 employees.
“I prefer where we are now to the boom times of the 80s,” he said. “We’re doing fine.”
Ballard was eating lunch on 21st Street on what would become the worst day of his life. He noticed a fire rescue truck flying by headed toward Ghent, where he lived with his wife and sons, Stephen Jr., 3, and infant son, Shaun.
Minutes later, a Norfolk Police officer pulled up hurriedly and opened the passenger door.
“Get in,” he was told. Ballard asked why, but the officer would not answer.
It was March 12, 1986, and Shaun had died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Shaun had appeared to be robustly healthy, but died while taking a nap. While the cause of SIDS isn’t known, it’s often attributed to a brain defect.
Ballard sent an employee to pick up B.J., then teaching at Lynnhaven Middle School. Once together, they wept and mourned for their little boy.
“I’ll never forget that day,” Ballard said. “It was painful. I think about it almost every day.”
The Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters got them into grief therapy with Evelyn G. Keever, and for a year they tried to cope with their loss. Eventually, he began to lead a therapy group for parents who have lost a child.
Stephen Ballard on the field with his family and ODU officials, including President John R. Broderick, at the dedication of S.B. Ballard Stadium in 2009.
B.J. said he mostly lost himself in his work. “That’s something men tend to do,” she said. “It’s more difficult for mothers. But I had to continue for my son (Stephen Jr.).”
Ballard built an office for Keever and has been a frequent contributor to CHKD ever since.
Losing Shaun, he says, “was an earth changing day for me. It helped make me a better guy.”
As did leading the grief group.
“Talking with others who’ve experienced this gives you a whole new perspective,” he said. “You think you’ve had it rough, but the stories you hear in there, of 16 and 17 years olds, they break your heart.”
The Ballards had another child, daughter Stephanie. “I think having Stephanie helped,” said Ballard, who acknowledges he's doted on her.
So, he says, did his Christian faith.
“I believe,” he said. “I know there’s an afterlife.
“I know God watches over me. He’s definitely taken care of me since” his son died.
Like Ballard, I also lost a child. When we first met and discussed our experiences in his Virginia Beach office in 2002, there was an instant connection.
Our lives have been intertwined in other ways. Stephanie married Virginia Beach businessman Luke Hillier, whose sister, Lindsey, was best friend to my late daughter, Ginny Minium. We knew Luke as well.
As I was interviewing Polokonis last week, he mentioned several times he lived two doors “from where your mother lived.”
It didn’t hit me until later that he really meant my mother. She tutored two of his kids shortly before she died in 2001.
Yes, it’s a small world.
Polokonis says at times he can’t fathom how Ballard deals with the enormous pressure that comes with his job.
When Ballard was asked at the Norfolk Sports Club Jamboree whether the ODU football stadium would open on time, he held up a sign to answer.
Ballard built a recently-opened 700 bed residence hall at Norfolk State and is working on James Madison’s new convocation center, a $200 million parking deck in Northern Virginia, an 11-story, $80 million building for Eastern Virginia Medical School and other smaller projects, all while building the stadium.
“He’s asked to make dozens of critical decisions daily that often involve a lot of money, insurance, accidents and so many other things,” Polokonis said. “And yet he’s always remains upbeat.”
Athletic director Wood Selig recalls being on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel on a Sunday evening when Ballard called to Facetime with him.
“He was showing me some finishes on the University suite and press box that he was proud of,” Selig said. “He told me he’d gotten there at 4:30 in the morning to meet the seat guy.”
Ballard was back at 6:15 the next morning, when subcontractors meet to discuss the day's schedule.
“It’s often said that great athletes don’t take a day off,” Selig said. “Stephen Ballard doesn’t take one off, either.”
B.J. agrees.
“We’ve been married 38 years and his work week is no different than it was in our first year,” she said.
“He’s always worked seven days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day. He admits to me that his job is his No. 1 priority.
Darrell Polokonis,a vice president at S.B. Ballard Construction, has been with the company and Stephen Ballard for 38 years.
“He’s a very complicated man. We’ve stayed together, and I hate to say this, because I have the right personality to be able to deal with Steve.
“But my God, I’m so proud of him, of what he’s done with this stadium. I’m just in awe of what he’s done.
“So many people said it couldn’t be done, but I knew he would. He’s always done everything he’s set out to do.”
Ballard demurs when I asked him if the project is important because it carries his name.
“It’s important to me because it’s a critical facility for ODU’s football program,” he said. “Bobby Wilder is a great coach and needs a facility like this.
“The most important work I’ve done in my career is what I’ve done for Old Dominion University. It’s an institution that I care for very much for.”
Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu