Benjamin Harrison Ballard

Over the next 38 years, lots of people came to share that opinion. Ben challenged us, taught us, and made us laugh every day. Thoughtful, sentimental, and with a deep sense of fairness, he was also a skeptic with a razor-sharp eye for BS.

He was in the Portland Japanese Immersion Program through high school, and graduated from the U of O with a BA in Business in 2010. But his true education was driven by his own lifelong curiosity. He continued to explore history, science, the fascinating and curious ways that humans behave, and especially anything to do with numbers. He loved to solve and invent math problems and logistical puzzles, and patiently tried to get us to share his enthusiasm. He learned to play chess from his father at an early age, and thereafter was always increasing his skill level and understanding of the game. Recently he was very proud to have cracked the 2000 rating level, the benchmark of competitive excellence, on chess.com.

Equally relentless when there was a problem to solve, he insisted on doing thorough research. And when he got interested in learning a skill, he often persisted until he had reached a level of proficiency that satisfied him, and then moved on to the next one. At different times, baseball, ice hockey, skateboarding, snowboarding, weightlifting, poker, 3D printing, finance, and business commanded his attention. He taught himself to be handy with tools and fix things, and built a successful landscape maintenance business, A Better Avenue. He was the professional, kind, funny “lawn guy” to scores of Portlanders.

And what a comedian! We never knew when a new character, voice, or facial expression would emerge without warning, and what hilarious bit he would entertain us with.

On August 13, 2026, we learned too late and too suddenly that he had hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiac disease. His dad Bill, his mom Anno, and his best friend and sister Emmy will miss him forever.

A private celebration of Ben will be held at a time to be determined.

Night, Ben. Love you.