Бал ағалар: өнеркәсіпкерлер мен қайырымдастар отбасысы

American industrialists and philanthropists
the basketball players

The Ball brothers (Lucius, William, Edmund, Frank, and George) were five American industrialists and philanthropists who established a manufacturing business in New York and Indiana in the 1880s that was renamed the Ball Corporation in 1969. The Ball brothers' firm became a global manufacturer of plastic and metal food and beverage containers as well as a manufacturer of equipment and supplier of services to the aerospace industry. In addition to the brothers' manufacturing business, they were also noted for their philanthropy and community service. Earnings from their business ventures provided the financial resources to support a number of other projects in the community of Muncie, Indiana, and elsewhere. Most notably, the brothers became benefactors of several Muncie institutions including Ball State University, Ball Memorial Hospital, the YMCA, Ball stores department store, and Minnetrista. The Ball Brothers Foundation, established in 1926, continues the family's philanthropic interests. The Ball brothers, whose glass company became known for its home canning jars, went into business together in 1880, and made the decision to move their glass manufacturing operations from Buffalo, New York to Muncie, Indiana, in 1886, due to the abundance of natural gas in the area. The brothers opened their factory in Muncie in 1888. The Ball company continued to prosper from their mass production of canning jars, known sometimes as "Ball jars". The company has subsequently expanded and diversified. By 1937, the value of the company was estimated at nearly $7 million.

The Ball brothers' parents, Lucius Styles Ball, a farmer and merchant, and Maria Polly Bingham Ball, a former schoolteacher, were born in Canada. They met in Greensburg, Ohio, and married on September 1, 1846. Lucius and Maria had a total of eight children, six sons and two daughters: Lucina Amelia, Lucius Lorenzo, William Charles, Edmund Burke, Frank Clayton, Mary Frances, George Alexander, and Clinton Harvey (died in infancy). The children were raised in eastern Ohio and in upstate New York. The boys' sister, Lucina, was an educator who assisted in the founding of Drexel Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and served as its financial secretary. Their other sister, Mary Frances, married Joseph W. Mauck, who became a longtime president of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. Their uncle, George Harvey Ball, who shared the Ball family dedication to higher education, founded Keuka College in upstate New York in 1890. When their father became ill, the Ball brothers "found a friend and confidant" in their uncle. After the boys' father died in 1878, Uncle George provided financial support and some measure of stability. Later in life, after the Ball brothers had become wealthy businessmen, they became benefactors to their uncle's college.

Lucius Lorenzo Ball (March 29, 1850 – July 22, 1932), the eldest of the brothers was born in Greensburg, Ohio. He grew up in Ohio and moved with the family to upstate New York, where he attended public schools and Canandaigua Academy at Canandaigua, New York. Lucius, whose ambition was to become a doctor, received his medical degree from the University of Buffalo in 1889, at the age of forty, and served as the house physician in Adrian Hospital in Pennsylvania before establishing a medical practice in Buffalo, New York. He moved to Muncie, Indiana, in 1894. In addition to becoming a shareholder and serving on the board of the Ball brothers' manufacturing company, Lucius practiced medicine in the Muncie community.

Due to the financial success of the Ball Corporation, the Ball brothers amassed considerable personal wealth and became influential men in Muncie's political and civic affairs. The Ball brothers made a number of philanthropic contributions to support the needs of the community and foster the city's growth, which included working with nonprofit agencies to provide aid to local and regional residents. The Ball Brothers Foundation, established in 1926, further expanded the impact of their philanthropic efforts. Eleven years later, in 1937, the George and Frances Ball Foundation was established to further the family's philanthropic efforts within Muncie and other locales of interest to the family. Over the years the Ball brothers made financial contributions to establish or strengthen an abundance of institutions: the local branches of the YMCA and the YWCA, the Masonic Temple auditorium, the Art Museum at Ball State, Ball Memorial Hospital, Ball State University, and Minnetrista, Muncie's cultural center, and assisted other groups.

One of Ball Brothers Foundation's first projects was to establish Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie. The hospital opened in 1929 and later affiliated with IU Health.

In 1893 Frank C. Ball bought approximately of land along the north bank of the White River, outside Muncie, where the Ball family built their homes. His two sisters named the site Minnetrista, a combination of the Native American word for water, mine or minne, and the Middle English spelling of a word meaning a pre arranged "gathering place", trist or tryst. Frank Ball's estate home, which was also called Minnetrista was the first to be built on the site in 1894; it burned in 1967. Frank's property became the site for a new a cultural center for the Muncie community. The center, which was named Minnetrista, opened in 1988. It preserves artifacts that document the history of Muncie and east central Indiana, and continues as a gathering place an important part of the Muncie, Indiana, community. Situated on , visitors may still visit its gardens and natural areas, which contain an assorted community of native Indiana plant and animal species, for free.

Eastern Indiana Normal University, a small, private teacher training school that was a forerunner to Ball State University, opened in 1899 to help boost the development of the city of Muncie Indiana located in Delaware County, Indiana. The school opened to much fanfare after the dedication of the administration building on August 28, 1899. The school would go onto have a great first year with an enrollment of 250 students who were enrolled in one of eight programs offered by the school. Tuition was cheap compared to modern standards with a ten week session costing students $10. Soon after that first year enrollment dropped to 110 and only 40 new students signed up The Eastern Indiana Normal University would close soon after on September 24, 1901. After the college and subsequent efforts to established an institution of higher learning at Muncie had failed, with the financial help of George A. Ball, a wealthy
manufacturer, the assets of the Muncie National Institute, a former normal school that was then training hotel employees, were purchased and donated to the State of Indiana to become a branch of the Indiana State Normal School at Terre Haute known today as Indiana State University. In 1918 the school opened as the Indiana State Normal School, Eastern Division. In recognition of the Ball family's generosity, the school was named Ball Teachers College in 1922. The school became Ball State Teachers College in 1929 and was renamed Ball State University in 1965. Ball State is one of only a few public colleges in the United States that includes a family name.

Although the Ball brothers moved to Indiana early in their careers, they did not forget New York or the early support they received from their uncle, George Harvey Ball, founder of Keuka College, a private liberal arts based and residential college based in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. After they became financially successful, the Ball brothers expressed their gratitude by donating additional land and providing funds to the college. In 1921 Ball Hall (Ball Memorial Hall) was named in honor of George Harvey Ball and the Ball brothers' contributions to the college. The foundation looks to fund innovation, programs that are just starting, and companies going through expansion. In September 1937 a bronze sculpture named Beneficence was installed on the Ball State University campus in Muncie to honor the Ball brothers' contribution to the community. The five columns of Indiana limestone that surround the sculpture represent the five Ball brothers.