What Ballard does not have in her life are children of her own. And now, in her 60s, she knows the choice she made was the right one.

"That's the important thing — the choice," she said. "My generation was the first that really were able to decide for themselves if they were going to have children or not. And I'm at the point in my life where I'm confident I made the right choice for me."

Ballard is one of 15 women who contributed her life story to a self-published book titled "Kid Me Not: An Anthology by Child-Free Women of the '60s Now in Their 60s."

Ballard was at first reluctant to contribute to "Kid Me Not" because, as she said: "My story would probably be the most boring one in the book. I haven't had the same sort of experiences that some of the others have had.

"And I thought it would be an easy thing for me to write, but it really turned into a process of self-discovery," Ballard said. "It made me examine a lot of the choices I had made in my life, and the injustices I had seen," such as the second-class status that women athletes had in small town Oklahoma high schools and the racial discrimination she saw aimed at her African-American friends and teammates.