By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
AUG. 6, 2021 | When Don Balfour of Snellville left his state Senate seat after 24 years in office, his wife, Ginny, asked him: “How are you going to fill that third of your time?” By then he was the longest-serving Republican senator, and chaired the powerful Rules Committee. Ginny realized that he was dividing his time between family, work and politics. Now he was out of politics. He told her: “I’m going to referee soccer.”
Soon after, Don became a referee for the Georgia High School Association, traveling as far as the Tennessee and South Carolina borders to run up and down the field with high school soccer teams, boys and girls, three nights a week, January to May.
When in high school in Greenville, S.C., Balfour played soccer and refereed kid games on Saturday. “They paid me $10 or $15 a game, and I would referee 4-5-6 games on Saturdays. It put money in my pocket.”
Balfour
That’s why the return to being a referee was a natural for Balfour’s newly-found extra time. Early on at a soccer workshop, the leader told about 500 newcomer referees: “There will be pressure on you. The fans and parents, and even the players, will not think you made the correct call all year long. So if you can’t take the pressures, you can quit now and save all this pressure.”
Among other things, it’s kept Balfour physically-fit, carrying 240 pounds on his six foot three inch frame. Balfour, who is 64, also has another way to keep fit: he runs marathons. For the last four to five years before Covid, he was running three marathons and six to eight half-marathons a year. His timing, he says, comes from the Bible: “Run the race, finish the course,” not necessarily quickly. He completes the marathons in five to six hours.
Referee Balfour
After growing up in Greenville, Balfour graduated from Bob Jones University with a major in accounting, then earned his master’s degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, N.J. “I had a lot of southern friends, and Atlanta was a good sized town, and among my offers was a job in Atlanta with Arthur Anderson, one of the Big 8 accounting firms.” He and his wife bought a house in Stone Mountain.
Among Balfour’s clients was Waffle House. “They were looking for a tax accountant, and I joined the business in 1985.” In the Waffle House tradition, Balfour says he is a “third shift cook,” and can man the grill when a Waffle House he is visiting has a cook out for the day. Over the years, he began doing government relations work for Waffle House. He served as the Gwinnett Republican Party chairman in 1982, and when a new seat came open after reapportionment, he was elected to the senate in 1992.
Balfour faced problems at the end of his career in politics. He was indicted by the State Attorney General on 18 counts of falsifying his expense report, all small amounts such as $11 or $22. “They were all true,” he says. “I filled out the reports incorrectly.” After three days of trial, the jury came back within 30 minutes with a “Not Guilty” verdict. “And that was in Fulton County.”
Today Ginny and Don Balfour have sold their Snellville home this year, and moved into an apartment in Norcross, near the Waffle House headquarters. They are to build a home in Jasper, Ga., where they plan to retire, though they haven’t broken ground yet.
And he’s still refereeing soccer. That’s the one way he filled his empty time.
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