Docent of the Year, Ray Ballash:
A Passion for Cast Iron
Picture a 3,000 pound cast iron beast, standing 6’8’ high, 4’6’ wide with a belly of lead, arms that lift and descend, and a strange keyboard for your fingers to tickle. This is a Linotype Machine, the typecasting machine invented in 1886 by Ottmar Mergenthaler in Baltimore to solve the age-old dilemma of how to set printer’s type mechanically. Now picture a family of such beasts, eight to be precise, residing in your standard two-car garage in Cerritos (CA), not to mention all their relatives locked inside six containers at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in the desert of Perris. This picture will give you some insight into the passion’s of the International Printing Museum’s 2007 Docent of the Year, Ray Ballash.
Ray Ballash is a man who has a passionate love for typesetting machines of a bygone era; how else can you describe a man who has nearly twenty of various makes and models. But along with that love for the machines is his knowledge of their operation, developed during his long tenure as a Linotype operator at Jeffries Banknote in Los Angeles. There have been countless times when Ray’s understanding of this machinery has solved a problem for the Printing Museum; having a museum of operating machines requires the technical help of many people like Ray.
From the beginning of the International Printing Museum in 1988, Ray Ballash has been one of our most dedicated volunteers, consistently contributing his knowledge and assistance to the museum. Whenever you take a tour through the collection and are able to watch an old Linotype or Typograph typecasting machine in operation, much of the thanks goes to Ray; he keeps them tuned and running properly, fixing the many jams inexperienced operators like myself create on a regular basis. For some of our machines that were hopelessly broken down, it was Ray’s patient hands that have given them life again.
As a teenager in the 1950’s Ray’s other passion for trains developed, leading him to found the Orange Empire Railway Museum along with several other young men. Ray’s decades of experience with establishing and operating an all-volunteer museum have given him a storehouse of wisdom that I have gone to over the years. One of his many Socratic gems that have been imbued on me, dealing with the constant struggle of an organization to keep track of things and get things done, “Find the tools, fix the tools, get the job done!”
Ray is part of our growing and expanding volunteer group at the Printing Museum, The Leather Apron Docent Guild. The help we receive from these many docents is an important part of our non-profit institution. By supplying their valuable resources, namely their time and talents, these individuals make possible the development of the many programs, exhibits and the overall advancement of the museum. The Printing Museum’s needs are varied enough to fit almost anyone who has an interest to give their time, including machinery buffs like Ray, tour guides, handymen, woodworkers, librarians, people to help sort and clean, teaching, office help and more. The docents come any given Saturday, but formerly gather on the first Saturday of the month and is open to all. You are welcome to join the ranks of great volunteers like Ray and put on your leather apron like Ben Franklin, who gathered together a similar group of local craftsmen to improve his Philadephia community.
Thank you, Ray, for your many years of dedicated service, friendship and passion. On behalf of the International Printing Museum’s Board of Trustees, it is truly an honor to recognize Ray Ballash as the 2007 Docent of the Year!
—Mark Barbour, Executive Director
 |
 |
| Ray Ballash giving Doc Whitson his first lession on the Linotype in September 2004. |
Ray Ballash still laying track 51 years after starting the Orange Empire Railway Museum in Perris. |
More pictures coming soon.