Rep. Barbara Ballard sings in her choir at Plymouth Congregational Church on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019.

Rep. Barbara Ballard’s hero, or “shero,” as she specified, is Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress.

The late Chisholm, elected in 1968 to represent New York’s 12th Congressional District, was known for calling service “the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.”

Ballard takes that quote to heart.

“If you just avoid and do nothing in this world, you have wasted your life,” Ballard, 75, said. “And if God gave you life, you need to do something with it. If he gave you a talent, you need to use it.”

Ballard, a Democrat who serves the 44th District, was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives in 1992. She has been in office longer than any of the other Lawrence-area legislators and has also served in national leadership roles, including as president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators.

But the Legislature is only one way Ballard shares her voice and talents with others.

Sunday mornings, she’s a soprano in the Plymouth Congregational Church choir. Ballard has been singing since she was 15. She was even a voice major in college. She said singing is “just part of my life.”

“It’s almost like breathing, to sing,” Ballard said.

On the first Thursday of November, Ballard rehearsed with her choir, which was singing John Rutter’s “Magnificat.” The choir performs two major works each year.

The tallest member of the soprano section, Ballard stood out in her red glasses, with a pencil in her hand and her right foot tapping to the beat. She called her church and choir a family.

Rep. Barbara Ballard sings in her choir at Plymouth Congregational Church on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019.

When rehearsal concluded that Thursday night, members of the choir asked for prayer requests for friends and family, and everyone seemed to know who the recipients of those prayers were.

“You know, these people care about you, and they know who’s sick, they know who’s well, they know who had a baby. They know who graduated from school,” Ballard said. “We know everything about each other.”

In addition to church services, Ballard also sings at funerals and has a long list of people who have asked her to sing for them when they die.

“And I smile and say, ‘Who’s going to sing for me?'” Ballard said.

When the Legislature is not in session, Ballard keeps busy as the senior associate director at the University of Kansas’ Dole Institute of Politics. This semester, she also taught a course in the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She has previously also taught courses for the School of Education.

Ballard said she has paid her dues and that “there’s very little I do that’s not fun.” If she didn’t enjoy her Statehouse work, Ballard said she wouldn’t continue it.

In this upcoming session, the most important issues to Ballard are those she considers to be most important to the state.

She said the funding of K-12 education remained her top priority.

The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in June that the state’s newest education funding plan for the K-12 system is constitutional. Funding will be increased by nearly $90 million a year. The court, however, did not relinquish jurisdiction over the case, meaning it could be brought to the court again if the state does not keep its funding promises.

Ballard also mentioned the need for increased funding for higher education.

“Everybody’s spending money on K-12, but if you spend all that money there you got to make sure you have a system for higher education that allows them to go further,” she said. “Because very few people can do something with just a high school diploma.”

Like Reps. Mike Amyx, Dennis “Boog” Highberger and Eileen Horn, all of Lawrence, Ballard said Medicaid expansion would be of utmost importance in the upcoming session.

Ballard is also passionate about removing guns from college campuses. She wants to repeal a law that allows people to carry concealed weapons on public college and university campuses and has a bill that would accomplish that goal.

Hundreds of people support her efforts to remove guns from campuses, Ballard said, noting that people will tell her when any gun-related bill comes up to which Ballard could attach her bill.

“If it says guns, they know, in the Legislature, that I will have this bill, my own, that I will put this bill onto that bill,” Ballard said.

If it doesn’t pass one time around, “I just wait for the next one.”

Of her proudest accomplishment, Ballard said it was fun to get a bill passed in her first session (it required trailers to have reflector lights), but she also said she was hesitant to choose just one thing from her many years of service in the Legislature.

“If it’s just one thing, that says all you’re doing is working on one thing. I work on multiple things. And so there’s no ‘one,'” Ballard said. “And people don’t just want you to represent them in one area.”

When asked why she ran for the Legislature, Ballard responded matter-of-factly: “I wanted to.”

Previously, Ballard had served on the Lawrence school board for eight years. She has a doctorate in counseling and student personnel services.

“It’s like saying, ‘Well, why did you pursue a Ph.D.?'” she noted. “Well, because I’m smart enough to do it.

“I was qualified. I could. And I knew I could contribute. And I knew there was enough people out there that would be supportive.”