It's sweet recognition for La Salle scientist

As he stands before his students at La Salle University, Gerald Ballough, a well-groomed man with a mustache and glasses, fancies himself a "tour guide for something absolutely magnificent, like the Grand Canyon."

"I'm not the main attraction. I'm just a sideshow," Ballough, 50, says.

But today the modest biology professor, a distinguished neuroscientist, will be the star - like it or not - when he receives this year's outstanding alumnus award from the Milton Hershey School. The Pennsylvania school is one of the richest educational institutions in the world, with an $8 billion endowment, and has a long-standing mission of educating disadvantaged children.

Ballough could give quite a tour of a life rocked early on by violence, loss and learning problems, only to be transformed by a boarding school that saw promise in him and nurtured a desire to pursue a career in teaching.

He was 15 when his mother enrolled him at Milton Hershey, which the chocolate magnate started in 1909. Ballough's father, a stockbroker, had died at 36, and his mother was working multiple jobs to support five children. Ballough struggled with dyslexia for much of his youth, and he had just flunked ninth grade.

"Milton Hershey really set me on the trajectory for success in this world. They aimed my gun," Ballough said in an interview outside his La Salle office last week.

Ballough was selected for the award for his accomplishments, humanitarianism, and mentoring of Hershey alumni enrolled at La Salle, Milton Hershey officials said.

"Gerry's exemplary career and his service to his school [Milton Hershey] made him stand out for us as a shining example of Mr. Hershey's legacy," said Ralph Carfagno, senior director of alumni relations and programs.

When Ballough learned four months ago that he would get the award, he said, he was shocked and "never felt worthy of it."

He remembers walking as a teenager through the school's ornate Founders Hall, which is wider than the Capitol Rotunda in Washington. He marveled at the oil portraits of outstanding alumni on the wall, never imagining his would hang there.

"I'm going to be up there with these people who are way more accomplished than me," Ballough said, almost in disbelief.

Growing up in Daytona, Fla., Ballough said, he was exposed to violence. He declined to talk about his early life or his father's death.

"I thought education would be a way of delivering me from what I perceived as a living hell," he said.

In 1973, when Ballough arrived, the Milton Hershey School was only for boys who had lost one or both parents. Today, the 10,000-acre rural campus in Hershey enrolls 1,700 boys and girls, three-quarters of them from Pennsylvania, including students who have both parents but are in financial and social need.

Ballough was miserable when he entered.

"It was terrible. I didn't fit in at all. I had no friends," he recalled. "I got bullied."

Soon, educators who believed in him placed him on the college-preparatory track, and he began to excel.

Ballough said some of life's most important lessons had come at the school: Compassion. Love. Forgiveness.

"It completely stabilized my environment and showed me the value of hard work," he said.

Mundane lessons left an imprint, too. He was punished an entire academic year for failing French. While other boys went out to play basketball, he had to sit and read, which helped him academically.

"Steinbeck became like a surrogate father for me," Ballough said.

He still keeps his 10th-grade biology notebook, filled with observations and conjecture. It was in that class that he learned the importance of note-taking.

"After that, I kept every lab book," he said, adding that the work fills 21 volumes. "My motto is 'When in doubt, write it down.' "

There were things he didn't like about the school. The required tour of barn duty, which included milking cows and unloading bales of hay, was the worst, he said. His senior year he won one of seven coveted spots in the first-tenor section of the glee club.

"Glee-club people were exempt. They didn't have to work in the barn," he explained. "So I sang as best as I could."

He went on to get a bachelor's degree in biology from Millersville State College and a master's degree and doctorate in physiology from Pennsylvania State University.

In 1990, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at Pasteur University in France, where he became fluent in French. The U.S. Army in 1992 took him to Maryland, where he helped discover potential antidotes for seizure-induced brain damage from nerve gas. He still consults for the military.

Then, harking back to his time at Milton Hershey, he decided to become a teacher. He has been at La Salle for 14 years. He lives with wife Daryl, a teacher at Media-Providence Friends School, and sons Dorian, 17, and Denny, 16, in Drexel Hill.

"I wanted to give back," Ballough said.

In his anatomy and physiology class for would-be nurses at La Salle one recent evening, Ballough was excited to give Rachel Light, 20, a Milton Hershey graduate, her test back so she could read the note from him.

"You have raised yourself to a higher level of academic performance, and I'm proud of you," he wrote.

Light, a junior, read the note and smiled. Ballough has been more than a teacher to her, she said.

"He's like a friend. He really looks out for you," she said. "It's so nice to know your teacher can care for you like that."

She said she planned to attend a banquet for Ballough yesterday.

"I'm proud of him," she said.