[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 179 (Thursday, January 3, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2526]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TRIBUTE TO MR. LOUIS BALLOFF

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR.

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, January 3, 2002

  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, since September 11th there have been many 
acts of kindness that have gone a long way to bridge the gaps between 
all faiths, not just here in the United States, but around the world.
  Many of these acts are done one at a time, noticed by few, but each 
having a significant impact on many individuals and communities.
  Mr. Louis Balloff, immigrating to this country from the Ukraine 
during the late 1800s, was one who touched many lives. He came to this 
country with nothing, fleeing religious persecution, seeking a new 
start to a better life and participating in the American dream.
  He eventually settled in LaFollette, Tennessee, and became a 
successful merchant. This community was good to him and he always felt 
a need to give back many of his financial successes to this town in 
rural Appalachia.
  The following article is a typical way in which Louis felt obligated 
to help less fortunate members of his community, not knowing the impact 
it would have on so many others.
  I have included an article from the Knoxville News Sentinel, which 
highlights one such act, that I would like to call to the attention of 
my fellow Members and other readers of the Record.

                   [From the Knoxville News-Sentinel]

                          Merchant Gives Love


                Boy took giant strides in gift of shoes

                         (By Jacquelyn B. Dean)

       A single act of kindness can sometimes have a tremendous 
     impact on a person's life, with repercussions felt halfway 
     around the world.
       Such was the case of Louis Balloff and Roy Asbury of 
     Campbell County.
       ``They were good friends,'' said Asbury's son, Campbell 
     County Circuit Judge Lee Asbury, ``but it was a strange 
     partnership. Mr. Balloff was an older, real conservative 
     merchant, and dad was a country lawyer and rabblerouser who 
     dabbled in politics. They were not alike, but they were still 
     close friends.''
       Both men are deceased.
       Balloff, a Russian Jewish immigrant who moved from New York 
     City to Campbell County and began his retail business as a 
     peddler selling goods in the mining camps, died of a heart 
     attack in 1964.
       Roy Asbury was a well-known Campbell County lawyer who 
     served one term as a state representative (in the 85th 
     General Assembly in the mid-1960s). He died of a heart attack 
     in 1970.
       The story of their friendship, and how it began, is told 
     over and over again by members of their families.
       Asbury was a poor, teenaged boy who walked barefoot from 
     Caryville to Jacksboro High School one September day in 1922.
       Balloff was a merchant who called him into his store that 
     ``cold, frosty morning and encased his feet in a good pair of 
     shoes with socks.''
       Their families later became friends, but at that time 
     Asbury was so resentful and prejudiced against Jews that he 
     left the store without saying thank you.
       Forty years later, in a letter dated April 28, 1962, Asbury 
     finally told Balloff ``thank you'' and recounted how that 
     single incident caused him to reconsider and shed his 
     prejudiced attitudes ``against all `furringers,' and 
     especially Jews.''
       Asbury wrote:
       ``The years began to slip by, you and that boy was always 
     and at all times friendly, but the shoes were never 
     mentioned.
       ``The boy learned as he grew older to love and respect the 
     Jews, and he developed a strong feeling of sympathy for all 
     minority groups, oppressed groups, or individuals, and he 
     never forgot that pair of shoes being put on his cold feet, 
     by a Jew, and continually promised himself that one day, he 
     would do something for a Jew to repay for the shoes, and most 
     of all for forever erasing from his mind prejudice against a 
     race or member of a race by prejudgment without due 
     examination.''
       Asbury found his opportunity in Paris in 1944, when he 
     served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
       He wrote that in September 1944 he found an orphanage 
     housing about 300 children, mostly girls and virtually all of 
     them Jewish. Their parents and relatives ``had been taken to 
     Germany and killed by that despot, Hitler.''
       Asbury wrote that the children were in the care of an old 
     Catholic priest and four nuns, but they were suffering from 
     extreme malnutrition. ``The old priest could not speak much 
     English, but he convinced that boy (Asbury) they needed sugar 
     and sugar products.''
       That night, he couldn't sleep. He woke a fellow soldier who 
     spoke French, and together they obtained a truck, went to a 
     U.S. Army supply depot, and ``appropriated 1,500 pounds of 
     sugar and 500 pounds of candy bars, and drove to the 
     orphanage, arriving just before daylight.''
       They unloaded the truck, awakened the priest and felt they 
     could foresee better days for all the children, he wrote.
       Before long, ``the U.S. Army personnel was furnishing food, 
     clothing, and medical supplies in abundance, and by the next 
     spring, the children looked almost normal,'' Asbury wrote.
       He said the old priest and nuns followed the truck and 
     tearfully tried to thank them.
       ``The boy heard their expressions of thanks.'' Asbury wrote 
     of his experience, ``but he knew they were not talking to him 
     but to a man who, on a cold frosty morning, put a pair of 
     shoes on the cold feet of a boy who was barefoot; and that 
     boy knew he was trying to do something for the Jewish race to 
     repay him for that pair of shoes, worn out more than 20 years 
     before. ''
       Asbury concluded the letter by saying, ``Lou, I don't know 
     how to say it, but for erasing from my mind and heart all 
     prejudice for any race, member of a race, or an individual 
     because of his race, creed or color, MANY, MANY, MANY 
     THANKS.'' He signed it, ``Yours truly, Roy Asbury.''
       Judge Lee Asbury said, ``I've heard dad tell that story as 
     long as I can remember. It's part of the family lore.''
       He said he's also known about the letter a long time, and 
     has a copy of it in his files. ``Dad was inspired at least in 
     part by Mr. Balloff's helping him out,'' he said.
       Says Lee Asbury of the Balloffs, ``I can't ever remember 
     not having a deep affection for the whole family.''
       Ed Balloff, who, with his brother, Sam Balloff of 
     Knoxville, operated a chain of Balloffs stores in LaFollette, 
     Oak Ridge and Knoxville, said, ``The letter meant a great 
     deal to me, and I've kept it in my files.''
       When Ed Balloff sought Lee Asbury's advice about what to do 
     following his retirement from the retail business, the judge 
     suggested he volunteer with the public defender's office in 
     Campbell County. He did.
       A mutual friend, Jim Agee, a distant cousin to famed writer 
     James Agee, suggested the letter might be especially 
     significant in this 50th anniversary year of D-Day.
       Asbury said there is a greater significance: ``People are 
     not any different. We all have the same desires. The quicker 
     everybody comes to that conclusion, the better off we will 
     all be.''