Agronomy and Plant Genetics 1888-2000 - Department of Agronomy ...

Chapter 9
Preface
On April 3, 1946, my wife, Bethene, and I
drove from Oklahoma into the Twin Cities to visit the University of
Minnesota. We planned to stay a day, go on to visit colleges in Nebraska
and Kansas, return to Oklahoma, and I would then enter graduate school
somewhere in the fall.
I was wearing my Army khakis when I met with H. K. Hayes, who said
that if I wanted to take graduate work here they would take me. Hayes
signed me up on the spot for 21 credits of graduate classes, including statistics
and genetics, though I had been out of school and in the military for
more than four years. I started classes the next day and have been associated
with the University ever since.
I worked on alfalfa for 18 years, until Stucker and Barnes took over
that project; then worked with the forage and legume seed production project
in northern Minnesota until retirement.
In the late 1980s there was talk of preparing a history of the department.
We formed a committee: Robert Andersen, Richard Behrens, Verne
Comstock, Jack Goodding, Don Harvey, Robert G. Robinson, Roy
Thompson, Walt Wedin and myself; I was sort of elected-appointed chair.
We had a lot of discussion but never made much headway. In retrospect,
it seems we gave more talk than good thought to the project. But thanks
to a good push from Burle Gengenbach, we finally have wrapped it up.
Early on I suggested that we list all who had earned graduate degrees
in the department, including the theses titles, dates, and advisers for the
Ph.D. graduates. Most did not agree. When I raised the topic on a visit to
Dr. Charles Burnham in the nursing home he said, “If you don’t include
them you will have a weak history.”
I found good reference material for the Ph.D. listing, but the Graduate
School has discarded many of the master’s theses. We did our best to