Longtime resident Audrey Ball was the grand marshal in Harvard’s 2025 Fourth of July parade. Chairman Christopher Chalifoux said the committee all agreed that “Audrey is an outstanding example of the volunteerism that makes Harvard such a wonderful town to live in.” He added, “I personally am amazed at everything she has done for this town since she moved here.” That move was 59 years ago.
Ball has previously said that she likes to be in the background, making things happen, which may explain her comment in a recent conversation that “It was weird to be riding in a convertible, waving to people.” She said it would have been better to be watching, seeing everything that others were doing.
While, with typical modesty, Ball said she wasn’t sure why she was being honored, she was very impressed with the car, a 1966 red Mustang convertible, owned and restored from the bottom up by Steve Reber. Ball reported, “It likes to go fast” so it had some trouble having to go slowly up the hill from Depot Road to the start of the parade. She was not all that reassured when Reber told her that he was “pretty sure it would make it.”
It is fitting that Ball was chosen this year. It is the 75th anniversary of the League of Women Voters, an organization to which Ball has been committed since she moved to town. In those years she has worked tirelessly at the league’s mission to provide residents with nonpartisan, carefully researched information on town and state issues and to encourage people to vote. It’s a surprising role for someone who grew up on a farm in Nebraska not knowing or caring about politics.
League activities
As a young, stay-at-home mother of four, the league was a perfect outlet: It was a way to learn and a place to do things that would make a difference. She almost immediately became a board member and started out with fundraising, where members had a door-to-door campaign, something hard to imagine today. In 1972, Ball helped start the annual Harvard Flea Market, which became a much-needed source of funding for the league. Ball served on the league steering committee, and she chaired the flea market a couple of times.
From left: Amy Jackson, Gwen Cook, Grand Marshall Audrey Ball, and Steve Reber cruise down Ayer Road in a fire-engine red 1968 Ford Mustang. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
What she loved best, said Ball, was working on various grassroots study groups that led to the publication of educational material. As league president in 1970, Ball oversaw the publishing of “Pocket Talk,” a brochure on town fiscal policy. She remembers walking around the large table at Friendly Crossways, collating and stapling copies of the text made on a Xerox machine. Other topics of publications included Harvard politics, Devens reuse, the Common, and the curriculum and finances of the schools. In the late ’80s, “Harvard Habitat” pamphlets focused on the need for affordable housing.
Ball worked at Laux Company, a small publishing company here in town, for 15 years in the late ’70s through the ’80s, remaining an active member of the league. When she left the company in 1992, she became the administrative secretary for the league, serving until 2016. She was involved in voter activities—registering voters at the schools, Devens, and the post office and helping to organize local and regional candidate forums. She took on the project of sorting through all the file folders of league activities stored at the old library and putting together “fat” scrapbooks of material.
Work with the Conservation Trust
Although most of her volunteering time and energy went to the league, Ball was also a member of the Conservation Trust since its inception in 1973. For 15 years she worked as the trust’s administrator. She had always been interested in conservation, and “it was nice to work for something you’re committed to,” she said. Ball was part of a trust subcommittee, Harvard Trust Nonprofit Properties, that bought and managed a large house on Stow Road, called Great Elms, and also the former Inn on Fairbank Street, both as affordable housing to answer the very real need of people in town.
Ball made time to volunteer at the schools over the years, helping with activities like Earth Day, the Science Fair, and student field trips. She was a founder and participant in the Harvard-Roxbury Summer Program in the 1970s, secretary to the first library’s building committee from 1999 to 2000, and active in church service committees.
Ball was proud of a recent recognition from the town clerk for her more than 40 years of working at the polls for town elections. Ball’s commitment to elections was further evidenced in a program at her church. People of different ages representing different decades in life were asked to answer the poet Mary Oliver’s question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Ball, representing the 80s, responded that it was to communicate to people how important elections are and to help inform them and encourage them to vote.
While no longer the person who would answer the call to do whatever had to be done, Ball continues her memberships in the league and the Conservation Trust, and for the past few years has helped sort books for the annual library sale. On future volunteering, she said, “There’s always something going on.”
