Marion (Ballard) Barrett

Class of 1959
Lincoln Community High School
Lincoln, Illinois

Leigh—

     Here’s a brief bio of my early life, then my life since I graduated from LCHS.

     I was born, 17^th in a family of 18 children, in a little called Chambersburg, IL, population 250 souls. I sometimes think they counted cats, dogs and chickens to arrive at this number, because driving through today you will miss it if you’re not looking closely.

     We moved to another small town called New Salem (not the one of Abraham Lincoln), which was not much larger. I attended a country school for the first six years, in which there were eighteen students grades one through eight. When I was in seventh grade we moved to Loraine, Illinois, which wasn’t much larger, although there were two churches, a grocery store and a pharmacy that doubled as the post office.

     After graduating from elementary school in Lorraine, I attended Unity High School in Mendon, Illinois for three years, transferring to Lincoln High School for my senior year. After graduating in 1959, I moved to Murfreesboro, Tennessee where I lived briefly before moving to Missouri.

     There in Missouri I met and married David Barrett. We have five children, twenty-five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. We moved to Arizona in 1974, remaining there for fifteen years, then moved to San Diego CA. I have been employed by the government for the past fourteen years, working at Naval Medical Center, San Diego as a secretary.

     I enjoy cycling the many lovely bike trails in the San Diego area. I am an avid Civil War buff, having traveled to many of the battle sites, and have a library of approximately 250 books on the subject. I have, in addition to the one book that is with the publisher right now, an outline of a historical novel about the battle of Gettysburg. I have also completed two non-fiction works that will be published after my novel. I write under the pen name of Robbin Ballard, which is a combination of my mother’s and my maiden names.

     For the past ten years I have lived in Imperial Beach (ten miles south of San Diego) with my three tyrant Pekingese dogs, three bossy cats and my husband, David.

Respond to Marion at robbinb00@yahoo.com.