UAHS Hall of Fame 2021: Academic
Submitted photo
Ball
Submitted photo
(Sangston) Hindle
Submitted photo
John
The Uniontown Area High School Academics, Arts & Athletics Hall of Fame was formed in 2013. After taking a year off due to the coronavirus pandemic, the organization has chosen a Class of 2021. Although there will be no ceremony held this year, the new inductees will be honored through the Herald-Standard in a series of stories.
Today: Part 3, Academic, Jess Ball, Dr. Debbie (Sangston) Hindle, Dr. Larry John.
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Jess Ball
Jess (J.C.) Ball was born in Uniontown in 1941 to Jess & Charlotte (Anderson) Ball. He graduated from Uniontown High School in 1959. He went on to West Virginia University (WVU) where he secured a degree in Electrical Engineering. While Working at General Electric in New York City, he also secured an MBA in Marketing at Rutgers University by attending night school.
His early life in Fayette County involved living in Edenborn, Filbert, New Salem and four different homes in Uniontown. He credits these moves with giving him a wide range of friends throughout the county.
Starting school at East End (while living on Dunlap Street), he got a good grounding in the fundamentals. Family moves to Filbert, New Salem and near Stony Point Cross Roads rounded out his Elementary School years before moving to Union Street and attending Ben Franklin Jr. High.
As a paper carrier for the Evening Standard(while living at 95 Penn. Ave.) he built up his route to 150 customers (largest in town) while doing phone solicitation for new clients for the Evening Standard.
As the oldest of seven children, he was often called upon by his siblings (also “paper boys”) to help “collect” from non-paying customers (affectionately referred to as “dead beats” by the carriers). He believes his perseverance and tenacity were honed in these “collection” activities!
Graduating from high school with a membership in the National Honor Society, he put his good training to work in Morgantown, W.Va., where he was honored as one of the Top Ten Freshman Men at WVU.
Summer jobs were an imperative to help finance the College expenses. To find work, he often went to the Chicago area to stay with family. Jobs there included working at the Arlington Park Racetrack, a Tavern and a Bridal Salon!
Upon graduation, he married his college sweetheart, Jackie Gwynn, and started work with General Electric (GE). After an in-house training program that involved several moves, he took as assignment at international General Electric in New York City that involved commuting three hours each day and attending the aforementioned night school at Rutgers. His job responsibilities involved travel to South America selling to Electric Utilities, Governmental Agencies and Industrial Companies.
A particular small, but significant, project involved bringing electricity, to a very remote mountain village. Using a nearby mountain stream, he was able to source an inexpensive water wheel driving a small generator that brought a few kilowatts of electricity to a place that had none. While he was off in the jungles of Ecuador, his wife, Jackie, was working at home to smooth the transition from place to place for their son and daughter (Jay & Jamie) as his career was developing and requiring frequent family moves.
Several other of his GE assignments involved international travel and business. At one point, he monthly travels were to Europe with quarterly visits to GE businesses, managed by him, in South Africa, Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore, Taiwan & Korea. Later, he was able to travel to China including, among other places, visits to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City in Beijing. With his passport loaded with international stamps and visas, the Uniontown boy got to see the world!
Eventually, achieving the title of General Manager at GE (equivalent to “President” in a smaller company), he was lured away by a recruiter, in 1985, to become President of Chicago Pneumatic Tool Company in Utica, NY with subsidiaries throughout the world. After doing a “turnaround” of that business, he started, essentially, a second career working with Private Equity (PE) Companies.
PE’s buy businesses and work to improve their operating results and then sell them. For the past 33 years, Jess has worked in varying roles ranging from Running the businesses to being a Board Member as well as a Coach/Mentor to the CEO of the business.
The businesses he ran were quite different including Evenflo Co. (products for infants & young children); the largest independent Gear Manufacturing business in North America; a Textile Printing business; a Packaging business; a Flooring Company serving national builders plus other enterprises both International and Domestic. He is particularly proud of serving “locally” as a Board Member/Partner in Pittsburgh Brewing Co. (Iron City Beer).
Now in semi-retirement, he no longer runs businesses but continues to serve as a Member of several Boards and enjoys helping others thrive in their own companies. For Fayette County companies, he provides his consulting services “pro bono.” His company’s website, www.cornerstone-assetscom, had proven to be a haven for struggling businesses.
Followers of Jess on Facebook (as “J.c Ball”) will note the frequent postings concerning Uniontown and Fayette County. As the saying goes, “You can take the boy out of Fayette County; but you can’t take the Fayette County out of the boy!” As the organizer of the Class of ’59 Reunions since 1979, he has worked to create a close-knit “community” for his classmates. This includes initiating and supporting a Class WebSite (www.UHS1959.com) where his classmates can stay in touch with long-held friendships.
Fond memories of Fayette County, Uniontown and Uniontown High School were the spark that went into creating a Class Scholarship Fund in the name of the Class of 1959 to support a worthy UHS grad going on to college Started more that 20 years ago, the Class Fund has awarded over $75,000 to UHS grads. The Fund has grown to where the annual award is now $5,000! With the various other Awards being made by members of the Class of 1959, it’s believed the Class of ’59 is the most generous to come through the school! Each year at the Awards Assembly, a challenge is given to the audience to also create such Awards.
Several honors have been accorded Jess including a life-time membership in the Mensa Society and being a Member and Past President of the Distinguished Alumni Academy of the College of Electrical Engineering of West Virginia University.
Mr. Ball makes his home in Florida with his wife, Jackie. Their adult children and grandchildren live in short driving distances from them. Summer time will find him in either Uniontown or a Maryland river-front vacation home.
Dr. Debbie (Sangston) Hindle
Debbie, youngest daughter of Dr. Russell and Virginia Sangston, was born and raised in Uniontown, attending Hatfield School, Ben Franklin Junior High School and graduating from Uniontown Area High School in 1967. From there, she went to Denison University in Granville, Ohio where she graduated in 1971 with High Honors in Biology and English Literature — two subjects that first captured her imagination thanks to the inspirational teaching of Mr. Merryman and Mr. Smith at Uniontown Area High School.
It was, however, the opportunity to take her Junior year abroad at the University of Nairobi that led to her returning to Kenya in the Peace Corps to teach at Kapsabit Girls’ High School, and subsequently to move to the United Kingdom which became her permanent home. Living in Nottinghamshire and working in the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) from 1976 to 1999, Debbie was funded by the National Health Service (NHS) to train as a child and adolescent psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic in London, traveling the 123 miles twice a week for seminars, supervisions and four times a week psychoanalysis over five years to be the first child psychotherapist in South East England — a recognized pioneer in the field. (Her father too was a pioneer as one of the first pediatricians to practice in Uniontown.) Thirty years on, child psychotherapy is a designated core profession within CAMHS services and many others have followed in her footsteps, making child psychotherapy available in the NHS and providing intensive treatment to some of the most troubled and vulnerable children and young people.
During this time, Debbie wrote extensively, publishing 30 professional papers on issues related to her clinical work — with children who were fostered or adopted, children who had experienced abuse or neglect, bereavement or multiple losses or were involved in delinquency. The significance of adult mental health and transgenerational transmission of trauma on children has been a central aspect of her work. Focusing on the child’s experience, Debbie highlights the importance of an approach which encompasses the utter uniqueness of every child as encountered in the therapeutic relationship, as well as addressing the importance of adequate provision for children in need. Other publications focused on aspects of teaching and consultation, highlighting the importance of multi-disciplinary and multi-agency work with complex cases. Linking the arts and psychoanalysis, Debbie hasalso published a number of papers — ‘L’enfant et les Sortileges Revisited, based on Ravel opera, ‘The Song of the Siren: Some thoughts on idealization and creaivity in Marinu’s Julietta’, and ‘Sendak and Knussen’s Where the Wild Things Are: a developmental journey.’
Debbie became a pioneer once more in being the first person to complete the Doctorate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (Child) at the Tavistock Clinic, based on a qualitative research project exploring the assessment of siblings in foster care.
In 1999, Debbie moved to Scotland to take up the post of Head of Child Psychotherapy Training (one of only four such trainings in the UK), and also worked on Professional Lead in the specialist CAMHS Service in Glasgow for Children who were Looked After and Accommodated. As Head of Training, she was proud to graduate over two dozen Masters’ students and numerous Doctorate students, but was involved in developing a training program for all staff joining CAMHS services throughout Scotland, New to CAMHS. Based on her clinical experience, she took a lead in raising awareness and developing a training in the recognition and response to emotional abuse, a key contributor to the Emotional Abuse and Emotional Neglect Multiagency Practice Guidelines for the West of Scotland. During this time, she continued to write publishing three co-edited books, Personality Development: A Psychoanalytic Approach (1999), The Emotional Experience of Adoption (2008), and Sibling Matters: A Psychoanalytic, Developmental and Systemic Approach (2014). Throughout this time, she was privileged to work in a system which supported the training of doctors and nurses, as well as her own training and where everyone has free access to medical care.
Since retiring from NHS in 2010, Debbie has continued to teach and supervise, to coordinate numerous conferences, and to develop and deliver courses for a wide range of professionals, making psychoanalytic thinking more widely accessible to those working with child and young people who may be difficult to understand or to engage. She has presented at conferences in Stockholm, Helsinki, Rome, Florence and Barcelona, as well as in Seattle and Washington, D.C. and throughout the UK, contributes to the work of her professional organization and has throughout her career been an active campaigner for the provision of child psychotherapy in children’s services.
A keen gardener, Debbie has a prize-winning garden in Nottinghamshire, and in Glasgow her garden has been open on the Scottish Garden Scheme as well as being featured twice in the Scotsman and the Herald Sunday papers. She is heavily involved in supporting not one but two community gardens on both sides of the Atlantic! Also a keen walker, Debbie has walked thousands of miles on long-distance footpaths in the UK and Italy. Over the last few years she has also had a chance to return to Kenya and to the Maldives, Seychelles, Rwanda, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and Ethiopia, reconnecting with her Peach Corps experience.
Only since retiring has Debbie been able to divide her life between Scotland and Northern Michigan, where she and her partner Kenneth Ross built a home on 80 acres of rolling meadow and woods, not far from her family’s summer cottage. Based on the footprint of Kentuk Knob, the Frank Lloyd Wright home built by the Hagans near Uniontown, the house is a bit of home from home. Now with several miles of walking trails, seating areas an viewpoints, they hold open days for the Conservancy, Audubon Society and walking groups.
The experience of growing up in Uniontown, of being part of a community of family and friends, left a deep and abiding impression on her, as did listening to her father’s many stories of the children he saw in his practice.
Dr. Larry John
Lawrence R. John, MD now joins the Hall of Fame, Uniontown Area High School (UAHS). Dr. John was born and educated in Uniontown, the son of Sarah Rogers John and Joseph F. John, both of whom also were graduated from UAHS. Dr. John attended Uniontown Public Schools and was graduated from UAHS, Class of ’68. After UAHS, Dr. John next attended the University of Notre Dame where he majored in Pre-professional Studies. Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, was his next stop for an MD degree that prepared him for a three-year residency in Family Practice at St. Margaret’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, now part of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC).
Larry has been married for over 40 years to his medical school sweetheart, Dr. Martha Davlin John, a well-known Pittsburgh pediatrician. After his residency, Dr. John remained at St. Margarets and built a thriving family practice that grew in four decades from a solo practice to a seven-physician group. Dr. John has been recognized many times by the group Best Doctors in America as well as in Pennsylvania. A major enjoyment of his career was serving as the school and sports physician for Fox Chapel Area High School in Pittsburgh. Fox Chapel also has recognized Dr. John’s outstanding contributions by naming him to the Fox Chapel Hall of Fame.
While at UAHS, Larry lettered in basketball and football. He was an excellent student and has maintained life-long learning through his more than 40-yera career in Family Medicine. Dr. John gained widespread respect for his clinical acumen and personal approach to all his patients. He also joined in many aspects of medical leadership, assuming the role of President of the Allegheny County Medical Society in 2014. After that office, Dr. John was nominated and gained election to become President of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, leading that group through a most difficult Covid-19 pandemic and 2020 year. At the PA MED, Dr. John created an initiative addressing physicians burn out and lectured throughout the state in an effort to preserve the cadre of physicians in the state. While holding both offices, Dr. John published multiple instructive articles in various publications.
Drs. Martha and Larry have four grown, married children: Joseph with a DSc in Health Services, Jeffrey, a lawyer, Katie, a high school teacher and coach, and Jeremy, a physician. Jeremy, the next Dr. John, has established a practice in general and breast surgery in Orlando, Florida. Larry and Martha have eight beautiful grandchildren and give them selflessly of their time and love as they have given their own children and countless patients. As a brother, Larry has enriched the lives of his three siblings, Jeraldine John, Joseph John, Jr., and Bonnie F. John.
Looking back at his UAHS experience, Larry cherishes many of his teachers and coaches, particularly Mr. Bill Merryman, Biology, and Coach Abe Eberhart, Red Raider basketball. Larry served as a summer playground director on several legacy Uniontown playgrounds.
As an outlet for the many challenges of medicine, Larry enjoys golf with his regular weekly foursome. Larry remains a humble, gentle healer, a person of the world who shares his life most generously in friendship and love. Lawrence R. John, MD has served as the ideal, model citizen and physician, befitting this honor in joining the UAHS Hall of Fame.