Letters: Ballard owes some apologies

In Mark Ballard’s column of Sunday, July 22, he seems to belittle the fact that Bobby Yarborough is a sausage maker. Bobby is proud of the business that he and his brothers operate.

He has been the CEO of that company for 15 years. He has also chaired many organizations in the Baton Rouge community, including Boys and Girls Club, Academic Distinction Fund and the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank. He was one of the youngest Golden Deeds Award recipients that your newspaper sponsors.

Bobby has chaired for 31/2 years the Capital Campaign for the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank and helped raise $11.1 million for a new building to increase the capacity and efficiencies to feed the hungry in 11 parishes. Bobby gave a significant monetary donation for that cause. He may not have known how many “FTEs” the hospitals have(that was the question asked by the House Committee), but he knows how many people in Baton Rouge go to bed hungry in our 11-parish area.

If Ballard was also implying that Bobby knows nothing about hospitals or health care delivery, he did so disingenuously.

Bobby has been the chair of the University Medical Center Management Corp. for two years and has been working diligently with this endeavor close to a full-time basis and receives no compensation. The UMCMC is the overseer of the new $1.08 billion academic medical center hospital, which is the state’s largest construction project. Ballard knows this.

Bobby has visited many academic medical systems around the country, including New York Presbyterian (Cornell and Columbia Universities), the Academic Medical Center of UAB (University of Alabama-Birmingham), and Wexner Medical Center (Ohio State University). He held high-level meetings with the top authorities that run these centers.

He led a panel of UMCMC board members on visits (using their own time and money for the trips) to gain knowledge from these successful academic medical centers. He and his board continue to have in-depth discussions with national health-care consultants.

I think this demonstrates that Bobby is well aware of and actively engaged in the reality of a 21st century health care delivery system with its challenges and opportunities.

I feel that Ballard is being sophomoric. He could have asked anyone from the LSU system why Bobby was speaking for the board. But I guess that would not have made for such an interesting quote as “Where’s Waldo?”

It is my opinion that Ballard owes an apology to both Bobby and Dr. Fred Cerise.

Marsha Yarborough

retired teacher and wife of Bobby Yarborough

Baton Rouge

Comments

1) Comment by gary - 30/07/2012

Mark owes no apology to anyone, much less Robert Yarborough. In the article Mr. Ballard was referring to Dr. Cerise expertise in the medical field (10 years of actually education - it could be more, but not less) - Mark referenced "bobby's" cutting remark that they make the decisions - not Dr. Cerise - this was in a reply to why Dr. Cerise wasn't present at the meeting - at the end of the column the head of the board said Dr. Cerise would be at the next meeting. If I ever need a medical procedure done - I will run by Manda's fine meats and let ole bobby hep me out. All of those conferences he attended I'm sure that would take care of med school - I could get a heart or kidney transplant for the cost of a 5lb of Manda's pork sausage.

2) Comment by dday198 - 30/07/2012

pop quiz? how many people are you over seeing? yea real ambush question.

3) Comment by bourbon-soda - 30/07/2012

As a public service, I think the Ballard article under discussion is http://theadvocate.com/csp/mediapool/sites/Advocate/assets/templates/Full StoryPrint.csp?cid=3399572&preview=y . It is an example of why many citizens who could contribute want nothing to do with politics or government, including the public schools. The "gotcha" question is a staple of the politically agendized. How many politicians, reporters, columnists and bureaucrats could stand up to random pop-quiz questions on their supposed expertise?

4) Comment by [e-mail] - 30/07/2012

If everybody did what they do as well as Mr. Yarborough makes Manda's Sausage then there wouldn't be as many problems for Mr. Yarborough to have to help to fix, would there? I agree with bourbon-soda on this one and I say: "Atta-girl Mrs. Yarborough!"

5) Comment by bourbon-soda - 30/07/2012

Good letter. Actual employers and producers are way below community organizers and career bureaucrats in the journalists' Great Chain of Being.

6) Comment by spqr - 30/07/2012

I read the column, too. It rambled. Ballard is dull.

7) Comment by dday198 - 30/07/2012

Yarborough couldn’t say how many people are employed by LSU hospitals. i'd bet mr. yarborough knows how many employees work at his sausage factory to the man. and he should know the same at lsu or at least a ball park figure. it's his job to know facts such as that.

8) Comment by dday198 - 30/07/2012

i went back and read the ballard column (on line) and let me state this in advance, i and my family buy and consume a lot of manda's sausage and will continue to do so. from what i read mrs.yarborough has a very thin skin and is very protective of her husband and needs to get over it her husband put himself in politics and mark ballard writes a fair column

9) Comment by Cousin Dave - 30/07/2012

Mark Ballard is so bad that they have apparently decided not to run his crummy column in the online Sunday advocated, though it continues to be printed in the newspaper. How pathetic is that? Anyone who would belittle a fine upstanding citizen like Mr. Bobby Yarborough should be fired altogether. Ballard stinks and so do his columns. We readers deserve better!