Alumni Memories

J. Verald Brown

Dairy Husbandry, B.S., 1938

J. Verald Brown

The Day Henry A. Wallace Visited My Class
(The following was written as class assignment in April 1936. See the editor's note that follows for more information)

Henry A. Wallace, secretary of agriculture, believes that the successful journalist must, first of all, have a vivid curiosity as to what is going on in the world around him; second, a profound regard for the truth; third, the diligence to dig out the truth; and fourth, skill in putting ideas into words so that other people can get them.

When asked his opinion about the value of journalism training, Wallace replied, "The biggest thing is that it requires you to meet new ideas and new people, and then tell about them so that other people can get them." "What is writing?" he asked. "Isn't it merely like trucking - a job of moving something from one place to another, of transferring ideas from one head to another head?"

Wallace stopped in Ames yesterday while on his way to deliver an address in Los Angeles Monday. Last night he spoke before the Iowa Academy of Science in Great Hall.

Sitting on the edge of a desk in the office of Prof. Blair Converse, head of the Journalism Department, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, Secretary Wallace seemed to enjoy his interview. Smiling his characteristic crooked smile as he was leaving, he remarked, "Be sure you don't misquote me. That's the unpardonable sin." His press conferences at Washington are famous because of the frankness with which he deals with the newspaper men.

Wallace's home is in Des Moines. He is the son of Henry C. Wallace, secretary of agriculture in the Harding and Coolidge administrations and the grandson of "Uncle" Henry Wallace, founder of Wallace's Farmer.

[Ed. Note: The following line was crossed out at the end of the paper.] He is 44 years of age, of medium height, slender, and has

Editor's Note: One of Brown's daughters, Jan Brown, has been the housemother for Alpha Gamma Rho at ISU for 12 years, after a long career teaching at Humboldt Community School (she earned her ISU degree in home economics education in 1964). Jan Brown recently shared her father's bound collections of school papers from the 1930s.

One of the papers was this journalism class assignment from April 1936, in which Brown wrote a brief account of a visit to the classroom by Henry A. Wallace, who at that time was U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and a 1910 alumnus of Iowa State. This was transcribed from Brown's handwritten account of Wallace's visit. (For the record, Brown received an "A-" from the instructor for the assignment.)

As a student, Brown was active in livestock judging, including membership on the 1937 dairy judging team that placed third in the Dairy Cattle Contest and in the top 10 of the National Intercollegiate Judging Contest. Brown was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho, the national agricultural fraternity, which has had the Eta Chapter at Iowa State since 1914. He lived at the AGR house at 201 Gray Ave.

After graduation, Brown worked a couple years as a loan officer with the Farm Security Administration (later known as Farmers Home Administration), then returned to the family farm in Franklin County, where he became an active and well-known swine breeder, raising and showing purebred Poland China and Yorkshire breeds. He served on the first board of directors of the Iowa Swine Testing Station in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1972, he was recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus by ISU's Gamma Sigma Delta, the Honor Society of Agriculture.

Brown and his wife Phyllis, who met while students at Iowa State, raised a family of four, who all earned degrees at Iowa State. (Phyllis was a 1938 graduate in home economics education.) Nearly all of J. Verald and Phyllis' grandchildren also were ISU graduates. J. Verald Brown died in 2004 at the age of 90.