Ball’s Afire!

“We were just a small burg until the community did something that was totally out of character for a town that size,” Bruce Baldwin, Director of Community & Business Development for the Muncie/Delaware County ED was telling me about how Ball Manufacturing came to Muncie, IN (population 67,430) when it was only slightly larger than its trading post origins. “They gave them 30 acres of land and $25,000 in cash, which was a lot of money in 1887, for the five Ball brothers to move here from Buffalo.” But that investment changed Muncie forever when the Ball Jars and canning system became a revolutionary way to preserve vegetables, turning Muncie into an industrial center.

The five brothers and their offspring were very good to Muncie. Several family foundations are still located in the downtown and institutions like Ball State University and Ball Memorial Hospital owe their existence to the generosity of the Ball families. Unfortunately, in the early 2000s Ball Corp moved their corporate headquarters from Muncie to a suburb of Denver to be closer to the aerospace industry that is the company’s main business today.

Muncie has a real charm to it. Its downtown is being vibrantly recreated and has few vacancies. Ball State is a big asset to the town and region. Having talk show host David Letterman as an alumni, who often talks about his days at Ball State hasn’t hurt.

We ate at Vince’s at the Airport, an upscale restaurant located on the tarmac. It is partially owned by Jim Davis the creator of Garfield. He has a 30 + person operation out in the county that produces Garfield each day and licenses the Garfield image and name around the world.

I’m constantly amazed at what I find in virtually every town that I visit. You only have to look a tiny bit to find gems everywhere.