Beauregard, Ball accept awards

<font color="3">Honorees surprised, humbled by selections</font>

By Libby Cluett and Christin Coyne
Penni Beauregard took off from work Thursday – the day the Index published the article announcing she was the newspaper’s Woman of the Year for 2009 – so it took a while for her to find out the news.

Her daughter, Lori Dyess, who kept the selection a secret as promised, asked her mother if she had spoken to anyone from work – code for “have you heard yet?”

Then Genevieve Baeza-Rodriguez called congratulating Beauregard.

“What do you mean congratulations?” Beauregard said she told Baeza-Rodriguez. “This is Penni, who did you mean to call?”

She said Baeza-Rodriguez giggled the whole time then explained everything.

“I was astonished and still can’t decide why I was the recipient,” she told the Index Monday. “There are so many other deserving people in this community – in all of Palo Pinto County. I’m still amazed at that, but honored at the same time.”

The Index’s 2009 Man of the Year, Richard Ball, was equally surprised to learn of his selection.

“It was a shock,” Ball said about seeing his name at the top of Thursday’s edition.

Ball said he was home watching football on the couch Thursday morning when his wife, 1995 Index Woman of the Year Connie Ball, asked him if the newspaper had come yet. He said she seemed really anxious for the paper to arrive.

His granddaughter later walked into the room and handed him a flat newspaper, Ball said. He later found out she’d been sent to buy the paper because his wife was worried he’d find out about the announcement from a friend before their paper was delivered.

Still, Ball said he was more interested in the football game than reading the newspaper but finally picked it up at his wife’s urging.

“I looked at it and looked at it again because I didn’t believe it,” Ball said. “I was very surprised and humbled.”

“I’m honored to be in the elite group of people the Index has chosen,” Ball said.

Beauregard continued to serve through cancer fight
Beauregard’s community service in Mineral Wells and Palo Pinto County is vast, varied and has spanned at least three decades.

She has served on non-profit boards like Hope Inc., the United Way of Palo Pinto County, the Mineral Wells Senior Center, Palo Pinto Challenge, Kiwanis Club of Mineral Wells, Crazy Water Festival and Mineral Wells Merchants’ Association.

In her spare time, this Farm Bureau Insurance agent employees her former radio days talents to being an emcee and helps the community in countless ways at events each year.

In 2008-09, she kept up her pace with board duties and work while squaring off against breast cancer and meeting the challenge to eradicate the disease in her body – so she could go on living.

Dropping her community service was not in the equation, despite hearing that she had one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer. duties while undergoing a year of chemotherapy. “I was that much more determined to, and I wanted to, stay a part of life.”

“I wanted to still be living – I wasn’t practicing dying – I wanted to practice living,” she said.

During the year-long treatment, which ended in July 2009, she took the toxic doses of chemotherapy and showed up to work or her trustee duties with a smile and willing to work. Her daughter Lori said her mom told the doctor she didn’t have time for the cancer.

“That was true, the part that I don’t have time for that,” said Beauregard. “And it certainly isn’t going to stop me. I went around bald-headed and in my scarves. It’s not going to win. I’m going to come out on top.”

She sill undergoes scans to keep vigil on the disease and still has a port for chemotherapy treatment. Beauregard explained that the type she has, if it returns, usually comes back within two years.

Through her treatment, Beauregard met others in the same situation; together they shared and learned how to cope with cancer.

“One of biggest things for me was meeting my sisters from chemotherapy at the Cancer Center [in Weatherford] was that you didn’t waste time saying, ‘Oh, well how are you today.’ We got down to the nitty gritty and you find out what someone else needs to make them feel better and you just do it.

“During the year that I took chemo, we’ve lost three of the women I took chemo with, and one of them was Jatonne [Adcox] from Mineral Wells,” she said. “You develop very – I think it’s almost like soldiers in a foxhole together – you just bond to each other and you just do what you can to help each other.”

“They’re an amazing bunch of nurses over there because they don’t let you get down,” she added of the Cancer Center staff. “They’re just little angels.”

Although she says there hasn’t been much of a change between life before cancer and today, Beauregard said this recent experience, combined with losing her husband of 26 years, John Beauregard, almost a decade ago, have helped her advise other, whether through work – selling life insurance and long-term care – or her community involvement on boards like Hope Inc.

“If anything … to have already gone through something [can help you] help people and advise them,” she said.

Beauregard said she has talked to a few people in town and sees the need for a local cancer support group to help enable those with cancer “to find out that other people have gone through it and are experiencing the same thing so you’re not alone in your feeling.”

But what makes Beauregard tick and be enthusiastically involved for so long?

“Because we’re lucky to be a part of a community like this,” she said. “And it makes you want to be active and participating in everything that goes on.”

This Mineral Wells transplant grew up in a family that followed their U.S. Air Force father from base to base. Beauregard said she attended 20 schools before she graduated from high school, but learned an indelible lesson in the process.

Beauregard serves as secretary on the Hope Inc. board and has served on the board since Hope’s inception.

“Hope is extra special,” Beauregard said. “Because they do so much to help people, not only get over an immediate instance, with domestic violence, but to change their life and to get them on a road to success rather than a road to failure.”

Another bright spot is her board duty with the Mineral Wells Senior Center.

“I’m so delighted they do an excellent job for our senior community,” she said. “As all of our baby boomers reach retirement years, that’s going to be a very important part of the community. I like that one, too.”

Ball has long history of community service
Ball was honored for his many years serving the Mineral Wells community through the Industrial Foundation, the Palo Pinto Area Foundation, the Mineral Wells Chamber of Commerce, the Mineral Wells Planning and Zoning Commission, the Brazos River Authority Board of Directors and other local organizations and projects.

“I enjoy helping our city, bringing in new industry,” Ball said.

“God put us here to do something,” Ball said. “If your talent is helping people financially or otherwise, that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“If you’re going to live in the city, you need to become active,” Ball said.

Ball said he believes if you are going to complain about a problem in Mineral Wells, you also need to be working towards a solution.

“Get on the other side, do something,” Ball said. “Try to make a difference and you might be surprised at the good you can do.”

Ball said he began getting involved in the community after watching his mentor, Jack Pratt, former owner of Wes-Tex vending and president of the Industrial Foundation in the 1960s.

“I saw the things that he did, [and] that made me want to be involved,” Ball said.

He began serious involvement with the community in the mid-1980s when he served as president of the Mineral Wells Chamber of Commerce.

“I’m finally on par with my wife,” Ball joked about being the second couple to receive the annual Index award. Clarence and Ruby Holliman were named Man and Woman of the Year in 1997.

“She’s always been very supportive,” Richard Ball added about his wife.

Since he was named man of the year, Ball said he’s received many emails and congratulations from people in the community.

When his pastor recognized him Sunday in front of his Southside Church of Christ congregation, “I wanted to crawl under a pew,” Ball said.

If Ball has been a little embarrassed by the attention, he also hopes the recognition helps convince others to become involved in the community.

“If I had an impact on anything or anybody, I would hope it would be a call to service,” Ball said.

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