Ode to Dad

(As read at my dad's retirement party)

Dad, distinguished guests,

I would have liked, more than anything, to be here personally to share this truly memorable occasion with you. Unfortunately, distance and my graduate studies prevent me from sharing this special night.

Many of you, perhaps, have only known Dad in one capacity. But my dad is a farmer, a grouse hunter, and a college professor. He is a skidder operator, a weekend mechanic, a collector of books and Native American beadwork. Tom is a mountain man, a photographer, and a naturalist. He is also a son, a husband, a father and a friend. He taught me how to gut a Dolly Varden, to drive a manual transmission, and the value of hard work and education.
My dad first learned about hard work on his grandfather’s farm in Lenexa, Kansas. As a young boy, he did all kinds of chores: dug fence poles, mowed and baled hay, and cleaned up after the barn animals. Later, he made fifty cents an hour to do miscellaneous jobs on a nearby farm. He held other jobs too: a general laborer for Johnson County, a worker on a highway construction crew, an entry position at a seed company, and doing various research projects for Kansas State University where he went to college. During breaks from school, he performed manual labor at the railroad yards.

After other jobs as a field manager for Birds Eye Foods and in the logging industry, Dad found his career with the extension branch of Oregon State University. This was his self-identified “niche.” As the extension agent for Umatilla County, Dad established his career in the early years by continuing to work hard and build relationships of collaboration and respect with the leaders of the local agricultural community. He used his knowledge of seed germination to grow a superior Walla Walla Sweet Onion variety in our back yard, and then sold it at a premium price to his colleagues.

Dad continued his extension work, developing a reputation as a highly respected expert of local horticulture, researcher, and a master gardener. For twenty consecutive years he spearheaded the Green Pea Variety Trials in which dozens of different green pea seeds are grown in small plots and data is collected on bloom date, harvest date, yield, and other variables. This extensive background, along with numerous publications, has made him the leading expert on eastern Oregon and Washington green pea production. Along the way, he earned the title of Professor as a member of the Horticulture Department at Oregon State University. He was responsible, in part, for founding the Walla Walla Basin Water Shed Council. He also helped to author the state’s Agricultural Water Quality Management Plan.

Dad is looking forward to having the time to do the things that he enjoys, and has had to put off because of the need to work. Much of the last several months has been devoted to preparing my childhood home for sale, slowly transferring belongings to the new house in Montana, and filling out the paperwork necessary to make sure that his pension checks arrive on time and to the right bank account. While expressing satisfaction with his career, he is looking forward to being near the mountains and public lands so he can explore and roam. He intends to stay healthy so he can spend much more time doing the things he has loved to do all his life: take pictures of wild flowers and insects; sleep out under the stars; cook marinated flank steak over a warm campfire; and take the long way around. He also looks forward to nurturing the relationships that are most important to him: Carol, his wife and companion; Levi and me, his children; Vesper, a good dog; and a few close friends.

I know that my dad’s tenure as County Extension Agent has meant many different things to many different people. This is some of what I have learned along the way:

- The most weighty of all agricultural decisions are best made over coffee and donuts at the Burger Hut.
- If consensus has not been reached, meetings may be reconvened over cheeseburgers in the afternoon.
- To inspire child labor to do good work, promise them Wenchell’s fringe benefits.
- Integrated pest management may mean more spiders, but it’s also cheaper than the conventional pesticide applications.
- The best Walla Walla Sweet Onion seed can be grown in your own back yard.
- Same with good garlic.
- If you’re nice to the local growers, the local growers will be nice to you.
- Contrary to what your taste buds might tell you, eating too many cherries all at one sitting really WILL give you the pits.
- This is true even if the cherries you eat have split.
- Apple scab does not a good apple spoil.
- The best stone fruits to be had can be found at Waliser’s fruit farm.
- They also sell really good tomatoes.
- Irrigation ditches are good for more than irrigation.
- Extension business hours are solely determined by the presence of the Extension Agent’s rig in the parking lot.
- If the rig isn’t dusty, the extension agent hasn’t been working.
- “Go to work” does not necessarily mean to punch a time clock.
- Whether you share your office with the water master or the county health department, never compromise the wall space that houses pictures of your children.
- Peter Pan may have made the pirate flag famous, but he never got up as early as my dad did to hoist it into the air.
- When planting green peas for the annual trials, it is very important to accurately number and account for the wooden stakes.

Tonight truly represents the end of an era. My dad had the honor of being the extension agent in this valley during the golden age of agriculture. Much has changed under his watch, and many of the old-timers can’t be here tonight. We remember them, in our collective conscience.

In conclusion, I thank each of you, because the sum total of your influence made my childhood the wonderful and memorable experience it was. I will always treasure my memories of apple-blossom-scented springs. Mostly though, I thank my dad.

Dad, thank you for teaching me to recognize the larval stage of the lady bug development. Thank you for taking the time to discuss the differences between regular mites and the two-spotted spider kind. Thank you for helping me to understand the life cycle of the apple grower’s nemesis…the leaf roller. Thank you for showing me the value of the coddling moth trap run.

When someday I reach the end of my working career, my only wish is that my friends and children will have as many good things to say about me as I could say about you. I am so very, very proud of you…as a man, but more importantly, just as my dad.

You’ve set the standard high; and created awfully big shoes to fill.

I love you.