Myrtle Arvilla (Nash) Ball

Myrtle Arvilla Ball was born on March 21, 1923 in San Diego, CA, the seventh of seven children to Ernest & Cora (Engel) Nash. She went to Heaven on April 15, 2018, exactly 63 years to the day after her beloved Harry Dale Ball was killed in a tragic truck accident on the highway between Phoenix and Tucson. Her family left Oneonta, NY in 1912 in a covered wagon with a one-year-old daughter  and had the distinction of being the only family to cross the US by themselves in a covered wagon. Her brother Joseph was born in Silver City, NM in 1914 and Edward in 1916 in Sangor, California. The family eventually moved to Southern California where they homesteaded in what is now the San Diego Zoo. Myrtle worked at the famous Del Coranado Hotel and then attended Biola Bible College. She met Harry Dale Ball and they were married in August 1944 in Belleville, KS (Dale’s hometown) after his enlistment in the Marine Corps ended. They had two sons, Stephen and Daniel and after traveling the US doing harvesting work, they settled in Nogales, AZ and worked as missionaries in Mexico.

After Harry’s death,  Myrtle and her boys moved to California to live with her parents. In 1959 they moved back to Tucson where Myrtle met and married Robert Seavey and they had a son Joel in July 1961. After her divorce, she moved to Kentucky in 1966 to care for her aging parents.  

After her father passed away in 1967, she again moved back to Tucson and obtained her LPN license and worked at Tucson Medical Center until her retirement in 1988. In 1999 she moved with Stephen and his family to Benson, AZ where she was active in the First Baptist Church. Her baby quilts have cuddled hundreds of babies throughout Mexico, Ghana, Africa as well as all of the family members.  She is the last of an era having outlived all of her siblings. She leaves behind three sons:  Stephen (Sandra), Daniel (Cindy) Joel (Cathy), 6 grandchildren- Darhla, Dale, Stacey, Sherrie, Kathleen and Holly. She has 13 great-grandchildren and 5 great-great grandchildren, as well as numerous nieces and nephews.

She will be interred in Chester, Nebraska next to Harry Dale Ball. No services will be held.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to your favorite charity in her memory.

To send flowers to the family or plant a tree in memory of Myrtle Arvilla (Nash) Ball, please visit our floral store.