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

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

Ballard settled in a straightforward chair that Tuesday and held the ticket that, if she wished, would take her back to the wild lifestyle that when defined her. She dismissed the offer with a wave of her hand.

“That,” she said, “is prior to now.”

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 a whole lot of riled-up spectators.

It’s hard to assume this 5-foot-2 slip of a lady 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 an expert wrestler at a time when the pay was low, the environment low-rent and the game was still attempting to straddle the road between legitimate competition and scripted, circus-like showmanship.

During her 19-year profession, Ballard had greater than 700 bouts and once ranked as high No. 5 within the country – never mind that the rankings often were made on the whim of promoters attempting to push grudge matches.

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

Well, just sit still and listen and don’t ask any silly questions. I may not like the lady, but she’s held the belt for a very long time, and which means she’s no slouch within 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 because the passages were read aloud to her.

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

One other magazine excerpt teases wrestling fans, telling them that those dames might 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 attractive blonde winner to the mat, gasping in agony.

No comment here from Ballard, only a wry smile.

The smile faded and he or she sighed.

“The reality is easy,” she said. “Jessica Rogers is long gone.”

Rogers rarely talks about her wrestling past, which resulted 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 query hung within the air.

She studied the ticket in her hand, admission to a night of skilled wrestling on the Eagles Lodge not too removed 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 would,” she warned, “have to bring my cane.”

***

To wrestle, Ballard had to go away home.

On May 4, 1955, Oregon Gov. Paul Patterson signed a law that prohibited women from wrestling within the state. Six months later, a promoter tested the ban by organising 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 high-quality and a 12 months 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 must be a sanctuary for men. A part of the ruling read: “There must be not less than one island in the ocean of life reserved for man that may be impregnable to the assault of ladies.”

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

The ban stayed in place for 20 years – everything of Ballard’s long profession. Vera Katz, then a state legislator and later Portland mayor, spearheaded a bill to make it legal for ladies 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 (an everyday) presence in Oregon,” Rodgers said. “They didn’t have the deep roots with fans the way in which the boys did.”

Which was just as well, so far as Oregon promoters were concerned. The feminine 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 creator Greg Oliver, who’s written eight books on wrestling. “But they were titillating. Their uniforms showed a number of leg and the body. They wore what looked like a swimsuit, but with tight rubber hoses on all the perimeters so, well, so nothing would come out.”

“In a single town, one woman can be the great girl, the opposite the villain,” said Oliver. “In the subsequent town they’d switch roles.”

Many local TV stations broadcast matches live after which showed reruns late at night through the week. This was long before WWE. Production values were low-cost, with an announcer to whip up the group.

Oliver said the ladies 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 automobile” to drive to the subsequent town on the tour, Martinez said. “We had plenty of good stories, and just talked, and stopped here and stopped there. We had plenty of fun.”

The ladies 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 snarled within the ropes at 4 minutes, then she one way or the other 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 group goes wild.

The ladies needed to be in great physical shape to grapple and endure the beat falls and holds.

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

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

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

Now get me one other a drink, and I’ll tell it prefer it was.

Tough, mouthy, in your face.

That was Jessica Rogers.

But it surely wasn’t Joan Ballard.

***

Born in North Dakota, Ballard moved together with her family to California through the Depression, after which on to Portland, where her father found work within 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 level and go to work as a physical-education teacher.

Her life plan modified, she said, because Portland newspaper stories about her athletic achievements caught the attention of a 300-pound wrestler who went by the colourful 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 attempting to get a stable of wrestlers to tackle the road themselves,” said Ballard. “He tracked me down and got here to the home to inform my parents he thought I used to be an important athlete and may 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 skilled wrestler named Man Mountain Dean.

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

So began a life that may soon take Ballard removed from Portland and every part she knew.

Man Mountain’s wife “took me to a gym in Portland and taught me different wrestling holds,” said Ballard. “I used to be in good condition. She taught me the give-and-take of wrestling. I’d put her in a hold, she’d get out after which 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 ladies. They soon began putting on performances in Utah towns and in surrounding states.

Man Mountain at all times topped the bill himself, an ideal villain, fighting under his own name in addition to 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 remainder of the time we stayed in motels.”

The wrestling world was unregulated, with promoters at all times on the lookout for latest faces, offering higher deals and contracts to lure talent from rivals. Ballard eventually left Man Mountain for Chicago, the key hub for Midwest wrestling, to hook up with a promoter there.

“I relied on promoters,” she said. “They were those that knew what the hell was happening.”

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

“I used to be on television on a regular basis,” she said. “My tag-team partner once dated Elvis Presley. I had an apartment, I’d go on the road and are available back. It was glamorous. At one point I owned 15 colourful, custom-made sequined jackets and 10 suits I wore within the ring.”

But when the matches ended and the cheers faded away, Ballard was, in some ways, an actress with no script.

“I couldn’t make friends outside the wrestling world,” she said. “I used to be at all times moving and at all times on the road.”

She found a certain peace being Jessica Rogers.

“I loved going to the wonder shop, being interviewed before the matches,” she said. “I knew that world. I believe that’s a part of the rationale I left Portland to wrestle. I figured I could find happiness elsewhere.”

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

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

Possibly love wasn’t possible, possibly happiness could only be fleeting, but there at all times was one other bout, and the roar of the group.

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

All that crazy passion arrange one more 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 offended 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.

One other time and in one other town, one other woman spectator attempted to chop Ballard with a nail file, but Ballard’s quick reflexes kicked in and he or she ducked. The nice girl got cut as an alternative of her.

Every so often, Ballard returned to Portland to go to family and friends – and, within the Nineteen Seventies, for the funerals of her parents. Then it was back to the road.

But, after all, this life couldn’t last perpetually.

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 on the lookout for latest faces.”

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

Finally, she walked away.

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

Jessica had been role, one which 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 profession change. “But I never had plenty of friends because I used to be at all times moving. I also never knew easy methods to manage money. I made plenty of money and spent plenty of money.”

She eventually decided to go away Tulsa and return home. Her sister and brother-in-law owned a used-car dealership on Southeast 82nd Avenue, and he or 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 2 Portland social-service agencies, driving people to their appointments.

But getting older alone isn’t easy. With each passing 12 months, her world grew smaller.

***

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

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

Up-and-comers looking for a spot on that big stage must work their way up by making a reputation for themselves within the minor leagues, wrestling in small towns and small venues across the nation, just the way in which all of it began. It is a more intimate world, where the fans sit near the ring.

That was where Joan Ballard was happening tonight.

She decided to go away the cane at home, figuring it will make her look too old. She needed to ask for a powerful and regular arm to assist her make her way down the front steps and into the automobile’s passenger seat.

Because the automobile 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 beat the heavy quiet, asked her: Who was Jessica Rogers?

Ballard didn’t must give it some thought.

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

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

Ballard, obviously the oldest person within the constructing, said hello to a lady 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 within the locker room until the matches began. That built up the anticipation for the group.”

Kel appeared puzzled.

“Back in your day?”

“Yes, I wrestled as Jessica Rogers.”

Ballard found her seat not too removed from the ring.

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

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

Soon, wrestlers, men and ladies, began going over to Ballard to shake her hand and chat.

It’s amazing to see you, one said.

You look in great shape, offered one other.

You’re a job model.

You paved the way in which.

You’re one among the pioneers.

You made fans love wrestling.

Ballard couldn’t imagine it.

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

After which it was time for the opening match. The five hundred or so fans within the lodge were ready.

So was Ballard. She studied the motion within the ring with a practiced eye, noticing how the 2 opponents played off one another: An illegal move, taunting, a wrestler coming off the mat on the last second to avoid a tag.

The group 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.

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

She turned and pointed to Joan Ballard.

“Tonight, we’ve got Jessica Rogers here. She was an expert back within the day.”

People turned to search out her in the group.

One other woman handed Ballard a vivid 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 lady helped Ballard out of her seat. She led Ballard – no, she led Jessica Rogers – around the surface 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 lots of within the front row reached out to shake her hand or give her a high-five.

After which the mantra, quiet at first, after which filling the room.

Jessica.

Jessica.

Jessica.

— Tom Hallman Jr

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

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