Alumni Memories

Essays on the College of Agriculture's History

A remembrance of Howard Robert "Jerry" Meldrum

by John Pesek, emeritus professor, agronomy

Jerry Meldrum

Howard Robert Meldrum was born to Mellie E. and James G. Meldrum on Nov. 1, 1896 in Dell Rapids, S.D. and had a sister and two brothers. He graduated from the Dell Rapids High School, and enrolled at Iowa State College in 1916; graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1921. He married Lillian A. Houseman of Ogden, Iowa in 1928 and they had two children, Mary Ann and Judy Mae. He died in Ames on Jan. 17, 1970 and survivors included his wife and children, the three siblings and three grandsons.

Jerry Meldrum was employed in the soil survey at Iowa State upon graduation and joined the Iowa State faculty as an assistant professor in the agronomy department in 1926. He became associate professor in 1948 and remained at Iowa State until retirement in 1960. As a faculty member his duties were divided between resident teaching and research until 1948, after that he was employed equally in the experiment station and the extension service. This latter appointment change coincided with establishment of the first outlying experimental farms after World War II, and he was responsible for helping to organize the experimental associations and select the farm in Howard County and the Carrington-Clyde Farm in Buchanan County. He directed the development and the research operations at these two farms during the growing seasons and conducted a soils extension program during the winters. Prior to that he taught, did soils and crops research on cooperating farmers’ fields and for many years had a WOI radio program each week for a month, usually in January or February.

Professor Meldrum’s tenure on the faculty spanned the stressful years of the Great Depression that required some faculty members to assume unusual duties while having reduced pay and responsibilities to the College, but their positions were preserved. Many of these were with the United States Department of Agriculture and other agencies.

Throughout the latter part of his professional life, he was a respected and admired member of the faculty, and well known to the farmers and members of the greater agricultural community in northeastern Iowa and the rest of the state. His influence was felt widely in the organization and operation of the outlying experimental farms and fields that proliferated in Iowa until the mid-’50s and continued until recently reorganized, but a basic partnership of the people and Iowa State persists.

Jerry was a friendly, gregarious and out-going person and that served him well in dealing with the general farming public. He had to convince farmers to help themselves by buying farms for the experiment station to lease and use as a place to conduct long-term research that would benefit them. The experimental associations were formed, raised money by selling shares, and then worked with Iowa State to locate an appropriate tract of land for it to purchase.

It was generally built upon the model of the Northern Iowa Experimental Association established at Kanawha over a decade earlier. The difference was that the Kanawha members had a common business interest of producing hybrid seed and conditioning it for the members, as well as providing land for experiments with sugar beets, potatoes and other small acreage crops grown in north central Iowa. The new association members bought their shares with faith that Iowa State would deliver. It is a partnership that was replicated at least 10 times and still functions well.