He attended high school and junior college in Santa Rosa, California.

He served as a cryptographer in Germany for the United States Air Force from 1950 to 1954, reaching the rank of staff sergeant.

(1961) and PhD (1965) in Germanic Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Ward retired from UCLA as Professor Emeritus in 1991, but continued to teach and research.

Ward's book The Divine Twins: An Indo-European Myth in Germanic Tradition (1968) received a Second Place Award of the Chicago Folklore Prize, and his German Legends of the Brothers Grimm (1981), a translation of the works of the Brothers Grimm, was named by Choice as one of the best scholarly books of 1981.

He was Editor of Encyclopedia of American Popular Belief and Superstitions (1986-), Associate Editor of Abstracts of Folklore Studies (1965-1978) and Fabula (1974-), Co-Editor (with Joseph F. Nagy) of Western Folklore (1996-2000), Member of the Board of Governors of Maledicta, and the contributor of articles to Handbuch des deutschen Volksliedes, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, Jahrbuch fuer Volksliedforschung, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, Classica et Mediaevalia, The German Quarterly, Journal of American Folklore, Myth and Law Among Indo-Europeans, Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales and numerous other prestigious publications.