Joan Ballard, pioneering Portland wrestler, discovered her true self on the road. Then she came home

It was a late afternoon in April when Joan Ballard received the invitation to revisit a world she’d left behind long ago.

The lifelong Portlander, 86, lives alone. Her parents and two siblings have died, and she never married. She showers love on Lulu, a small dog that barks at visitors.

Ballard settled in an easy chair that Tuesday and held the ticket that, if she wished, would take her back to the wild way of life that once defined her. She dismissed the offer with a wave of her hand.

“That,” she said, “is in the past.”

A past that involved throwing other women around a tattered canvas ring and crashing down on top of them. All to the hoots and cheers of hundreds of riled-up spectators.

It’s hard to imagine this 5-foot-2 slip of a woman as Jessica Rogers, the stage name given to her by a promoter who thought it sounded sexy. The Jefferson High School graduate lost herself in Rogers, leaving Portland in 1954 to barnstorm the country as a professional wrestler at a time when the pay was low, the environment low-rent and the sport was still trying to straddle the line between legitimate competition and scripted, circus-like showmanship.

During her 19-year career, Ballard had more than 700 bouts and once ranked as high No. 5 in the country – never mind that the rankings often were made at the whim of promoters trying to push grudge matches.

Excerpts from wacky, long-defunct wrestling magazines published in the 1960s offer a glimpse into the character of Jessica Rogers in her own words.

Well, just sit still and listen and don’t ask any stupid questions. I might not like the woman, but she’s held the belt for a long time, and that means she’s no slouch in the ring.

As a matter of fact, I’ve even got a busted nose from her shoulder flips.

In her easy chair, with Lulu calm and resting by her feet, Ballard chuckled as the passages were read aloud to her.

“They made all that up,” she said. “It was all to get fannies in the seats.”

Another magazine excerpt teases wrestling fans, telling them that those dames could be just as dirty as any man.

In a match against Vicious Vivian Vachon in California, Jessica lost, but Jessica had her revenge.

When the ref raised her arm, Jessica hit Vachon with a drop kick that sent the beautiful blonde winner to the mat, gasping in agony.

No comment here from Ballard, just a wry smile.

The smile faded and she sighed.

“The truth is simple,” she said. “Jessica Rogers is long gone.”

Rogers rarely talks about her wrestling past, which ended in 1973 in Joplin, Mo., when she was 36.

“I’ve got to be honest,” she said. “Who’d care that some old lady was once a wrestler?”

But did she still care?

The question hung in the air.

She studied the ticket in her hand, admission to an evening of professional wrestling at the Eagles Lodge not too far from her Portland home.

She hadn’t been to a wrestling match in 50 years, not since that last match in Missouri. She reached down, her fingers gently petting Lulu, before speaking.

“Why not?” she said quietly. “I don’t get out much anymore.”

She smiled.

“I might,” she warned, “need to bring my cane.”

***

To wrestle, Ballard had to leave home.

On May 4, 1955, Oregon Gov. Paul Patterson signed a law that prohibited women from wrestling in the state. Six months later, a promoter tested the ban by setting up an exhibition in Oregon City featuring two women, said Mike Rodgers, a wrestling historian who lives in Troutdale. Authorities threatened the promoter with a $500 fine and a year in jail.

The matter ended up in front of the Oregon Supreme Court, with the court – in a unanimous decision – upholding the law. Justice Walter Tooze wrote that wrestling should be a sanctuary for men. Part of the ruling read: “There should be at least one island in the sea of life reserved for man that would be impregnable to the assault of women.”

“They didn’t consider it ladylike,” said Rodgers.

The ban stayed in place for two decades – the entirety of Ballard’s long career. Vera Katz, then a state legislator and later Portland mayor, spearheaded a bill to make it legal for women to wrestle in Oregon again. It passed in 1975.

This didn’t change things much. It was too late.

“Even after that, women wrestlers weren’t (a regular) presence in Oregon,” Rodgers said. “They didn’t have the deep roots with fans the way the men did.”

Which was just as well, as far as Oregon promoters were concerned. The female wrestlers thrived as femme fatales, mystery women. They didn’t live in your town. They blew in, made a scene and sashayed out.

“They were never portrayed as exotic dancers,” said Canadian author Greg Oliver, who’s written eight books on wrestling. “But they were titillating. Their uniforms showed lots of leg and the body. They wore what looked like a swimsuit, but with tight rubber hoses on all the edges so, well, so nothing would pop out.”

“In one town, one woman would be the good girl, the other the villain,” said Oliver. “In the next town they’d switch roles.”

Many local TV stations broadcast matches live and then showed reruns late at night during the week. This was long before WWE. Production values were cheap, with an announcer to whip up the crowd.

Oliver said the women wrestlers stuck together. A wrestler from the era – Laura Martinez, who battled under six different stage names – once told him that Ballard drove an old Cadillac. Ballard and other wrestlers would “take off in Jessica’s car” to drive to the next town on the tour, Martinez said. “We had a lot of good stories, and just talked, and stopped here and stopped there. We had a lot of fun.”

The women were athletic actors, following a script that allowed for some improvisation, but they knew the arc of the match: an illegal chokehold two minutes in; good girl gets tangled up in the ropes at 4 minutes, then she somehow gains strength and gets free before the bad girl runs across the ring to kick her. Bad girl is dazed, good girl pins her. The crowd goes wild.

The women had to be in great physical shape to grapple and endure the beat falls and holds.

What drove the sport was hype, revealed by Jessica Rogers in an excerpt from one of those fan magazines:

Tonight was the worst bout I’ve ever been in, and that covers a lot of wrestling.

Tonight, I was beaten by a cockeyed referee and a little squirt called Sheri Lee. And I could take that little snip any day of the week if I had a decent ref in there with me.

Now get me another a drink, and I’ll tell it like it was.

Tough, mouthy, in your face.

That was Jessica Rogers.

But it wasn’t Joan Ballard.

***

Born in North Dakota, Ballard moved with her family to California during the Depression, and then on to Portland, where her father found work in the wartime shipyards.

A natural athlete, Ballard was a high-school star in track, basketball and softball. She planned to go to Portland State, get a degree and go to work as a physical-education teacher.

Her life plan changed, she said, because Portland newspaper stories about her athletic achievements caught the eye of a 300-pound wrestler who went by the colorful name Man Mountain Dean Jr.

Dean Jr., like his father had before him, was working the carnival circuit, which had brought him to Portland for a performance.

“Man Mountain and his wife were trying to get a stable of wrestlers to take on the road themselves,” said Ballard. “He tracked me down and came to the house to tell my parents he thought I was a great athlete and should join his team.”

Her parents gave their blessing.

She nods when told that sounds crazy, her parents letting their 17-year-old daughter hit the road with a 300-pound professional wrestler named Man Mountain Dean.

But they were working-class people, and they were being practical. It sounded like their Joanie could make a better living as a wrestler than as, say, a secretary. They had no way of knowing if she’d get through Portland State and earn a teacher’s certificate.

So began a life that would soon take Ballard far from Portland and everything she knew.

Man Mountain’s wife “took me to a gym in Portland and taught me different wrestling holds,” said Ballard. “I was in good condition. She taught me the give-and-take of wrestling. I’d put her in a hold, she’d get out and then she’d do it to me.”

Ballard headed to Salt Lake City with the couple. There she met the troupe’s other wrestlers, men and women. They soon started putting on performances in Utah towns and in surrounding states.

Man Mountain always topped the bill himself, a perfect villain, fighting under his own name as well as that of Fred Volnick, Fred Volrich and, to play off anti-German sentiment following World War II, Ivan Popoff.

“We wrestled in armories,” said Ballard. “We had bouts most nights of the week. We each got paid every night, 80 bucks or so, enough to pay the rent at an apartment at our home base. The rest of the time we stayed in motels.”

The wrestling world was unregulated, with promoters always looking for new faces, offering better deals and contracts to lure talent from rivals. Ballard eventually left Man Mountain for Chicago, the major hub for Midwest wrestling, to hook up with a promoter there.

“I depended on promoters,” she said. “They were the ones that knew what the hell was going on.”

Ballard later moved to Tennessee, linking up with another promoter, who sent her across the south.

“I was on television all the time,” she said. “My tag-team partner once dated Elvis Presley. I had an apartment, I’d go on the road and come back. It was glamorous. At one point I owned 15 colorful, custom-made sequined jackets and 10 suits I wore in the ring.”

But when the matches ended and the cheers faded away, Ballard was, in many ways, an actress without a script.

“I couldn’t make friends outside the wrestling world,” she said. “I was always moving and always on the road.”

She found a certain peace being Jessica Rogers.

“I loved going to the beauty shop, being interviewed before the matches,” she said. “I knew that world. I think that’s part of the reason I left Portland to wrestle. I figured I could find happiness somewhere else.”

Ballard knew she was gay when she was in high school and didn’t see how she could be true to herself in deeply conservative Portland, where her parents, she believed, would never understand her.

“I had to keep it a secret,” she said. “I once had the love of my life, but we could never be open about it. She had a career, and I couldn’t take her on the road with me. She died, and to this day I still miss her.”

Maybe love wasn’t possible, maybe happiness could only be fleeting, but there always was another bout, and the roar of the crowd.

Ringside fans took it all very seriously, each bout a clearcut case of good versus evil, where good girls followed the rules while bad girls cheated, and the referees always seemed blind to dirty tricks.

All that crazy passion set up yet another series of paydays where fans put down hard-earned money to see their favorite girl get revenge.

Once, when Ballard was playing the bad girl, an angry fan jumped out of her seat, reached into the ring, and stabbed Ballard with a knife. The wrestler was lucky to suffer only a minor wound.

Another time and in another town, another woman spectator attempted to cut Ballard with a nail file, but Ballard’s quick reflexes kicked in and she ducked. The good girl got cut instead of her.

From time to time, Ballard returned to Portland to visit family and friends – and, in the 1970s, for the funerals of her parents. Then it was back to the road.

But, of course, this life couldn’t last forever.

On Nov. 24, 1973, in Joplin, Missouri, Jessica Rogers had her last bout.

She lost.

It was over.

“My bookings dried up,” she said. “The promoters were looking for new faces.”

She’d already fallen down wrestling’s ladder. At her height, in the early 1960s, she was making what she describes as “good money,” without getting into specifics. Over the years, the paydays slowly got smaller.

Finally, she walked away.

She had a garage sale, getting rid of her sequin jackets and uniforms, in effect burying Jessica Rogers.

Jessica had been a good role, one that gave Ballard purpose and meaning, allowing her to feed off the applause – the love – of fans.

But that was now the past.

By 1974, she was simply Joan Ballard, renting an apartment in Tulsa, Oklahoma, managing a nightclub.

“I liked being around people,” she said of the career change. “But I never had a lot of friends because I was always moving. I also never knew how to manage money. I made a lot of money and spent a lot of money.”

She eventually decided to leave Tulsa and return home. Her sister and brother-in-law owned a used-car dealership on Southeast 82nd Avenue, and she went to work for them.

Then they sold the business and moved to Arizona.

Ballard stayed in Portland. She lives in her parents’ house and does OK on her Social Security income.

Wanting to be around people, Ballard volunteered for two Portland social-service agencies, driving people to their appointments.

But getting older alone isn’t easy. With each passing year, her world grew smaller.

***

On May 6, the appointed night to watch a wrestling match at the North Portland Eagles Lodge, Ballard was at the front door of her home.

Professional wrestling at its highest level is a very profitable business with national TV shows and events that pack 50,000 people into an arena. Hulk Hogan and the Rock came out of that world.

Up-and-comers seeking a spot on that big stage have to work their way up by making a name for themselves in the minor leagues, wrestling in small towns and small venues across the nation, just the way it all began. This is a more intimate world, where the fans sit close to the ring.

That was where Joan Ballard was going on this night.

She decided to leave the cane at home, figuring it would make her look too old. She had to ask for a strong and steady arm to help her make her way down the front steps and into the car’s passenger seat.

As the car pulled away from the curb, she looked out the window and fretted, wondering if she looked presentable. Eventually she fell silent.

Her chaperone for the night, to overcome the heavy quiet, asked her: Who was Jessica Rogers?

Ballard didn’t have to think about it.

“She disappeared with time,” she said. “I missed her then and I miss her now.”

Inside the lodge she noticed the wrestlers milling about, talking with fans.

Ballard, obviously the oldest person in the building, said hello to a woman wrestler who went by the name Rebel Kel, who was standing near a table where the performers sold photographs.

“Back in my day,” said Ballard, “we stayed in the locker room until the matches started. That built up the anticipation for the crowd.”

Kel appeared puzzled.

“Back in your day?”

“Yes, I wrestled as Jessica Rogers.”

Ballard found her seat not too far from the ring.

Kel had never heard of Jessica Rogers, but she related the brief interaction to others.

Someone looked up Jessica Rogers on the internet. Word spread, wrestler to wrestler.

Soon, wrestlers, men and women, started going over to Ballard to shake her hand and chat.

It’s amazing to see you, one said.

You look in great shape, offered another.

You’re a role model.

You paved the way.

You’re one of the pioneers.

You made fans love wrestling.

Ballard couldn’t believe it.

“I don’t even know how to explain what just happened,” she said. “The warmth, the shaking of my hand, the hugs. I don’t know how to describe it.”

And then it was time for the opening match. The 500 or so fans in the lodge were ready.

So was Ballard. She studied the action in the ring with a practiced eye, noticing how the two opponents played off each other: An illegal move, taunting, a wrestler coming off the mat at the last second to avoid a tag.

The crowd cheered, which made Ballard smile.

“The show,” she said. “It’s the show. That’s what it’s all about.”

At intermission, the announcer climbed into the ring, microphone in hand, to make an unplanned announcement.

“We have someone special here tonight,” she said. “A legend.”

She turned and pointed to Joan Ballard.

“Tonight, we have Jessica Rogers here. She was a professional back in the day.”

People turned to find her in the crowd.

Another woman handed Ballard a bright green T-shirt. Every wrestler on the night’s card had signed it.

People began cheering. The applause and cheers swelled and broke over Ballard.

The woman helped Ballard out of her seat. She led Ballard – no, she led Jessica Rogers – around the outside of the ring.

Jessica Rogers waved. She posed. She couldn’t stop smiling – couldn’t stop beaming.

The fans gave her a standing ovation, and many in the front row reached out to shake her hand or give her a high-five.

And then the chant, quiet at first, and then filling the room.

Jessica.

Jessica.

Jessica.

— Tom Hallman Jr

503-221-8224; thallman@oregonian.com; @thallmanjr

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