Norman Borlaug Interview (page: 5 / 9) Ending World Hunger	Print Interview

We'd like to go back and talk about your own background and education. You grew up on the family farm in Iowa. What was that like? Did you have a happy childhood?

Norman Borlaug: I guess it was. It was a happy childhood as far as I was concerned, but this little farm was 14 miles from a railroad, and so you didn't know much about what was going on beyond your own immediate neighborhood.

What was it like to go to school in Iowa? It was a small schoolhouse, we understand.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Norman Borlaug: I went to a one-room country school, New Oregon Number 8, where in the winter there was probably 15 or 16 students. The rest of the year when there was farm work, there was only probably 10 or 12. The difference between winter and spring was that many of the students were still studying when they were 17 to try to finish the eighth grade, and they came only in the winter months when there was no work in the fields. So the teacher -- one teacher -- had to deal with five-and-a-half year olds to 17-year-old boys. How she did it is beyond me.

Did you have the same teacher every year?

Norman Borlaug: Sometimes we had the same teacher for two or three years, but generally it changed at least every two years.

Did you like school? Were you a good student?

Norman Borlaug: Yes, yes. Probably because of my grandfather. He was self-educated, but he had a high regard for school. He always used to say, 'When you're young you'd better study to put information in your brain that you will use later in life to improve not only your well-being but that of your neighbors and friends". Quite by accident, that was the slogan of the Rockefeller Foundation, which was that their existence was for the well-being of humankind.

What kind of a student were you?

Norman Borlaug: I was, I think, a pretty good student. My grades were good. In high school I got the American Citizenship Award and the Frozier's medal, which were two of the honors that were given by that school.

How did you get to school?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Norman Borlaug: We walked except when there was an unusual blizzard or storm. Then maybe one of the neighbors would hitch up the sled to horses and come and take all the students that lived near where he lived. But with that exception, you always walked. See, this was during the worst of the Depression. I was in high school beginning in 1929, which was when the bottom came out of everything and the local banks went broke. There was unemployment. I thought it was bad in the rural areas, but 1933 when I went to Minneapolis to try to get into the University, I found out what the Depression really was like -- unemployed everywhere.

I went downtown about a week before classes before the University started. I just walked down there, I saw a lot of people milling around, and I'm a country boy and never seen anything like that. I was in the middle of the milk driver's strike and I didn't know it. Suddenly, a cameraman tried to get up to get a better picture with his tripod and his foot went through the canvas top on the car and then all hell broke out. They beat him up and busted his camera, and that triggered, right when the trucks -- I guess in this commotion they figured they could get out better -- trucks for this milk company. When they came out, there was people being beaten with baseball bats and clubs of all kinds.

Was there anyone in school you admired, or someone who challenged you as a young man?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Norman Borlaug: I guess I owe a lot to my cousin Sina Borlaug, who was later my teacher in grade school. But when she was young and I was very young, I should tell you that there was an unwritten law among the school children in those areas. When there was deep, fresh snow, one of the biggest boys in the neighborhood where most of the people lived, he would go in front and open a path, and then the little ones were in the center. Once in a bad blizzard, I just couldn't go any longer and I lay down and I wanted to give up, and Sina, who was in eighth grade, she grabbed me by the ear and whacked me on the face and got me going again. This was the way that these young kids went to country school. When it was a very bad blizzard, you couldn't see -- only a few yards -- then one of the neighbors would come with his sled and two horses and take the children. But most of the time you walked.

When you got to high school, wasn't there a wrestling coach or a principal that made an impact on you?

Norman Borlaug: He was both. Cresco was a small town, but it had good athletic teams both in football and wrestling, especially. The wrestling coach, Dave Bartelma, came to Cresco when I was beginning my junior year, so I only knew him for two years in Cresco, as he was principal of the high school and wrestling coach. Sometimes he helped with football coaching also. He was a strong disciplinarian, and there was no smoking, there was no drinking with him around. Later, when I was a junior in the University of Minnesota, I got him transferred to Minnesota as head wrestling coach, and he went on from there after the war to become Director of Athletics in University of Colorado. But all through life we were still very close friends.

You were not immediately accepted to the University of Minnesota. You were planning to go to a teaching college, weren't you?

Norman Borlaug: I had the ambition to be a high school science teacher and athletic coach. That was my great hope, my ambition at that time, because of the influence of Bartelma. He was a graduate of Iowa State teachers college, now Northern Iowa University, in Cedar Falls.

Was your family supportive of you going to college, or did they want you to stay and work on the farm?

Norman Borlaug: Oh, my granddad was ahead of his time. He was always in favor of education. My dad and mother were too, but Granddad was very aggressive in that. You know, as he used to say, "You've got to fill your head with new ideas so you can use them later to improve your own status and that of the neighborhood."

What made you change your mind and go to the University of Minnesota?

Norman Borlaug: Well, first I should point out that the second person that had a great influence on my life was George Chamberlain. Now he had graduated from Cresco High School a year before I started, so I didn't know him. But his father had been County Recorder for 20 years and he knew my dad. He used to tell Dad that, "Your son should go to the University of Minnesota, where my son is a halfback on the football team." Eventually this happened. Chamberlain took me up there with my closest friend in high school, Ervin Upton; he took the two of us. Prior to that, all the good wrestlers from Cresco High School went to the University of Michigan or Iowa State. So I was a renegade. I went to Minnesota because of George Chamberlain, and George Chamberlain was a good public relations man, because later in life he was the vice president in charge of personnel at General Mills, and later a number of other large milling and baking companies.

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