From 'The Bachelorette' to Cambodia, C-Falls grad has a world view

Jedidiah Ballard has come a long way since his days of stealing firewood and hiding from the Forest Service.

The Columbia Falls graduate has been on the Today Show, the cover of Men’s Health magazine, and the TV show “The Bachelorette.”

Ballard was back in town recently as the speaker at Columbia Falls High School graduation, and told the story of how he and his older brother used to haul 6- to 8-foot log segments off Forest Service land in the dead of night. His father’s truck was always broken down, Ballard said, and when the boys saw headlights, they’d have to drop the firewood logs and lie flat on the ground to avoid being caught.

And of course, Ballard said, they’d be tired and fall asleep in school, and get in trouble for that.

Ballard is no stranger to hardship. He also made it through 61 grueling days of Army Ranger school - there were 386 men who started, and only 31 who passed.

There was one close call, he said, overnight in a swamp when he was so cold he lost control of his body and almost couldn’t change his clothes due to intense shivering. Another week, he had only eight hours of sleep the entire week, and over the course of the training, he lost more than 20 pounds and the skin off the bottom of his feet.

It was worth it, though. He got his tan beret and his ranger tab and was deployed once to Afghanistan and once to the Korean border for a total of five years in active duty.

He signed up for the Army during his second year of medical school after talking to lots of older people and hearing their stories.

“I thought it was a powerful part of life experience,” he noted.

And he considers himself lucky, especially among physicians, to have the physical capabilities to do special ops.

“America’s been so good to me that I wanted to give back,” he said.

Ballard was raised in Lima, a town of about 200 people located 100 miles south of Butte. He attended Columbia Falls High School for his senior year, graduating in 2000, and elected to have his residency in Augusta, Georgia so that he’d see stabbings, shootings, and the like during training to prepare himself.

He now works as an emergency physician and teaches emergency medical procedures at Augusta University. He also does humanitarian work all over the world, regularly teaching ultrasound techniques in Panama and Peru every nine months. He worked at a hospital in South Africa and taught English in Cambodia.

“It’s really good to get a global perspective,” he noted. “There’s a difference between poor in the States and poor in the Third World. It’s a reminder of how good I have it.”

And he loves seeing the joy in kids’ faces everywhere.

“The spectrum of human emotion doesn’t change. But giving a Cambodian kid a soccer ball is like giving a U.S. kid the keys to a Lexus,” he recalled. When he’s not working or giving back, Ballard likes to visit Montana and “play in Glacier.”

“I like the freedom of Montana. You get off the plane and the air is better,” he noted.

Closer to his Augusta home — home being relative, since he said he hasn’t lived anywhere longer than three years —he likes to be outside and go paddleboarding. He’s into all forms of fitness, including lifting weights, swimming, and playing basketball.

Ballard has been widely recognized for his physical fitness and humanitarianism, winning the Men’s Health Ultimate Guy competition for 2016. Featured on Men’s Health magazines in the U.S. and Germany and on the Today Show, he continues to dabble in fitness with a weekly local news segment.

He was also on “The Bachelorette,” but just for the first night.

“I would much rather take a risk I wasn’t prepared for and fall on my face than not take the risk and regret it,” he explained. “But it’s hard to be good TV and keep teaching at a med school.”

Ballard’s life and undertakings have been influenced by his small town values and work ethic.

“There’s an expectation of personal accountability,” he noted, saying he tries to own and acknowledge both his failures and accomplishments.

He grew up poor by U.S. standards, he said, and lived in a barn in first grade.

But at the end of the day, he knows he was lucky even then, and that was part of his advice to graduating seniors.

“I had U.S. citizenship and a diploma. Globally, with a passport and a high school diploma, you can do literally anything. Put in the work to lead the life you want.”