Charles F. Ballou, III, M.D., son of Minnie Blake Stephens and Charles F. Ballou, II was born on January 10, 1924 in Springfield, Ohio.

He died on Thursday, November 19, 2009 at his home in Clifton Forge, VA.

Dr. Ballou was educated in the public schools of Indiana, Tennessee, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and West Virginia.

He graduated in 1942 from Beaver High School, Bluefield, WV, where he was an honor student, outstanding football player and class president of his senior class.

At the end of his freshman year at VPI, he was drafted into the US Army, completed OCS training, was commissioned a second lieutenant and served in the Pacific Theater until July, 1946 when he was honorably discharged as Captain.

After WW II Ballou continued his pre med education at Duke University, graduating in 1949. He married Adelaide Prickett Baritell ("Bari") in August, 1949 and entered Tufts University Medical School in Boston, MA in September of that year. Graduating Tufts in June, 1953 he then began his advanced training in internal medicine and pulmonary disease in Washington, D.C. at D.C. General Hospital at the Georgetown service and continued there and at the Veterans Hospital until 1959.

He became board certified in both specialties and became a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and of the American College of Chest Physicians. The C & O, Emmett Memorial and Alleghany Regional hospitals in the Alleghany Highlands offered Dr. Ballou the perfect place to practice specialized medicine in the rural setting he always desired, believing that people in such areas deserved the high quality care enjoyed by urban residents. He felt great satisfaction in the establishment of a pulmonary care unit and clinic as well as an intensive care unit in the hospitals he served as well as being a part of the 1959 team that supplied the first pacemaker given a patient (H.W. Hoffman of Clifton Forge) in the state of Virginia.

An associate of Jackson River Internists, he also served as Clinical Associate of Medicine, University of Virginia School of Medicine. In 1973 he was awarded the Virginia Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease Association's Nora Spencer Hammer Award for significant contributions to the programs against those diseases.

Dr. Ballou always praised and thanked the nursing staffs with whom he worked attributing their professionalism to the guidelines and training established by the late Louise Reynolds at the old C & O Hospital School of Nursing. He was also grateful for the vision of the late John M. Emmett who set high standards for the practice of medicine that are still evident in the Alleghany Highlands.

On retirement Ballou volunteered as a physician in the Alleghany Highlands Free Clinic and was a consulting physician for the Bureau of Hearings and Appeals for the Social Security Administration. At various times Ballou also served as president of the Alleghany-Bath County Medical Society, Vice President of the Virginia Lung Association, President of the Virginia Thoracic Society, and as Virginia Representative to the American Thoracic Society. Volunteering time to his community was a way of life for Charles Ballou. He served as Cub Master, as a Clifton Forge City Council member, as team physician at both Clifton Forge and Alleghany High Schools (20 years), as a member of the Community Services Board, as a volunteer and board member of the C & O Historical Society and as teacher and board member at Central United Methodist Church.

On retirement in 1989 Dr. Ballou earned an MA in history from Virginia Tech. He wrote articles on Civil War medicine that appeared in the Washington Post, Virginia Medical Quarterly and Tufts Medicine and was a teaching docent at the George C. Marshall Library in Lexington, VA until he suffered a stroke in 2000.

Dr. Ballou enjoyed reading, traveling, football and spending time with his wife Bari, their sons, Jim and Sam, and their wives, Shelly and Tammy.

He was devoted to his granddaughters, Kate, Marguerite and Hannah......and as little girls they were often seen around town with their grandfather or heard playing tag and other games with him in his yard.

He is survived by the above family members as well as a sister, Jane Ballou Carroll of Estero, FL; a nephew, Blake Adams Carroll, Naples, FL; a niece, Kristen Carroll Bott of Salt Lake City, UT; and several great nieces and nephews.

Funeral arrangements are by Nicely Funeral Home, Clifton Forge. Visitation at the Funeral Home will be on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. A memorial service will be announced sometime next spring at Central United Methodist Church with Rev. Michael Warren officiating. The family suggests that memorial gifts to Dr. Ballou take the form of contributions to Mountain Regional Hospice Volunteers, P.O. Box 637, Clifton Forge, VA 24422 or to the Alleghany Highlands Free Clinic, 103 Old Church St., Low Moor, VA 24457.