99-year-old Flower Mound veteran keeps fit by hitting the gym

Visit most gyms or fitness centers and you’ll likely see plenty of young and middle aged people working out.

Stop by Serious Results Personal Training in Flower Mound’s Parker Square and you might just run into someone less than a year away from his 100th birthday.

That’s where Arzell Ball follows his weekly regimen overseen by co-owner and personal trainer Adam Hammett. The former Richardson Independent School System superintendent has been taking instruction there for about 18 months, ever since his daughter Barbara Love moved him into the Watermere independent living retirement community.

“It’s been a really good challenge for him,” Love said. “As you get older people expect less from you and do more things for you which is nice in a way, but in another way you can kind of feel like you’re not doing much or asked to do much. Here he’s asked to do some things and he’s successful over time and it’s really good for him both physically and mentally.”

Love and her husband Richard moved to Denton from Missouri five years ago to be closer to her parents who had an apartment there. Her mother Thelma died about three years ago and less than two years ago, she moved her father to Flower Mound.

Looking for somewhere Arzell could receive better training; she found Hammett and Serious Results.

“He used to do physical therapy but his insurance kind of cut that off,” Love said. “We were looking for someplace to help him increase his stamina and be more active.”

She’s glad she found Hammett as he and his oldest pupil hit it off right away.

“This guy here really works me,” Ball said.

“There are people far younger than him who aren’t as capable,” Hammett said. “He’s just got a drive in him and the ability so we do the best we can.”

Hammett puts Ball through a routine that includes squats, push-ups, curls, triceps work, upper back movements, and a little bit of balance all of which take a lot of energy and time.

“We don’t push him too hard, but we also don’t take it easy on him,” Hammett said. “He’s got the fight in him. It’s hard to put the fight in someone.

“We started him off with maybe 25 squats and he’s up to 50 or 60 squats. And we do some other exercises. Over time, we’ve got him up to some significant weights.”

Ball was familiar with weightlifting from his time in the Army and made it part of his routine throughout his life. After spending his formative years in Oregon and Missouri, he entered the Army during World War II. One year later during the famous Battle of the Bulge, he was hit by artillery shell shrapnel costing him to lose part of his right leg while on the Rhine River in Remagen, Germany. Transported back to the United States from a military hospital in France, he spent most of his recovery at a U.S. hospital specializing in amputees.

“Thank goodness someone carried me over the river, and I ended up in Battle Creek, Michigan,” said Ball, who received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star among his commendations.

Once leaving the military, he secured three education degrees – a bachelor’s from Missouri State University in Springfield, a master’s from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and Doctor of Education degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

He initially taught science and math and was a school principal in Missouri. After earning his master’s, he taught American history and was an assistant principal and later principal in Wichita, Kansas.

In 1964, he became assistant superintendent of the Lincoln, Nebraska, public schools. Three years later he took a job as superintendent in the Kansas City suburb of Shawnee Mission, a position he held for 15 years. The Balls moved to Texas in 1982 for the job in Richardson where he guided some major updates just like in Shawnee Mission.

“As a superintendent I was always in a position to improve the schools,” Ball said. “In the school district there was always something new that you needed to put in or it becomes obsolete,” Ball said.

He retired in 1994, after which he served as an interim superintendent for several districts and spent five years with the Texas Region 10 Educational Services Center where he organized the Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program for 13 school districts in Dallas County.

The exercise regimen Ball has been doing is working, his heart doctor said he is in great shape.

“He’s a great people person,” said Love, mother of three of Arzell’s four grandchildren.

“I often use him as a reference when someone is whining,” Hammett said. “I tell them ‘I’ve got a guy who is 99 with one leg over here. I don’t want to hear any whining anymore.’”