Alumni Memories

Essays on the College of Agriculture's History

Argicultural Adventures

By Fred Smith, professor emeritus, genetics, development and cell biology

Fred Smith
Professor Emeritus,
GDCB

Editor’s note: Frederick G. Smith served Iowa State University for 31 years as a faculty member and as head of the plant pathology department in 1948-1979. He is an emeritus professor of genetics, development and cell biology. Smith writes about his unique approach to data collection and his adventures as department head.

A Chicago chemist, tempered by agriculture at Wisconsin with crucifers and Cornell with apples, weeds and tomatoes, I thought I might fit in at Iowa State, now nearly 60 years ago.

The department was strong in oat pathology then and I had a student interested in how the rust pathogen attacks its host. To maintain a supply of spores for this work we needed to be able to keep them viable in storage. This led us to develop a lyophilization procedure (vacuum freeze drying) that came to the attention of a U.S. Department of Agriculture oat pathologist who visited the Iowa projects annually. He said he knew some people in Washington who would be interested in our work and might be able to support it.

It turned out that a group in biological warfare at Fort Detrick was interested but couldn’t be officially involved. The office of Naval Research, a forerunner of the National Science Foundation could help and did. So, we borrowed my wife’s Electrolux vacuum cleaner and a long power cord to reach a building near our oat plot. In this way, over several seasons we collected sufficient spores for our work. On one occasion a farm truck stopped and the amused driver seemed to be talking to his partner that this was the way college professors controlled oat crown rust. We had some success and helped the people at Fort Detrick, if not the war effort. Since our work got by with to the lowest level of security we needed only to have a padlock on the office drawer where we were supposed to keep our records. I still have the padlock as a souvenir of our “war work.”

The department was poorly housed in old Ag Hall and the need for modern facilities became apparent. It was a long story, but with seedsmen of Iowa working in the Legislature it could be done with help from the National Science Foundation. I was delegated to work as the latter when Wendell Bragonier, our department head, left for Colorado State. I remember a seedsmen’s committee coming to inspect our facilities. One old gentleman seeing that they were headed for the top floor where the seed lab was sat himself down on a bench and said as a younger man he often climbed to the top floor, but let’s sit on this bench and talk about it.

After this adventure, I wound up down a floor in the department office away from my dear old lab. I was greeted soon after with another example of our precarious housing. One cold spring Sunday night, the air leaked out of our sprinkler system so water entered a pipe in the attic freezing and bursting the pipe. The flood came down through the seed lab eventually into the department office where floor outlets had just been installed for our new electric typewriters.

By the time I got there a resourceful professor had gotten a brace and bit and bored a hole to drain the water in the classroom on the ground floor which had floor drains so we were ready for Monday classes. He put a rubber stopper in the hole so the secretary’s chair wouldn’t get stuck. I had forgotten all about this incident until later when a committee from the psychology department who were to occupy the building looked into the office. One of them seemed to be puzzled by the rubber stopper if not by the present building occupants.

I was learning a good deal about agriculture and something about administration, especially how to get help. A letter came one day from the Iowa Secretary of Agriculture. He had been informed that students in eastern colleges were circulating maps of the location of marijuana plants in Iowa. Mr. Liddy, up for reelection soon, was concerned about unfavorable drug publicity. He proposed that cannabis be declared a noxious weed so it would be illegal to have it on one’s property. As usual, I consulted our expert, Dutch Sylvester, who reminded me that in my present position as State Botanist I was responsible for advising the secretary on noxious weed regulations. Dutch said he would take care of it. His letter pointed out to Liddy that the marijuana plants were largely descendents of hemp plantings in a naval cordage program during the war. They were mainly on railroad right-of-ways and public land, owners of which would not be pleased to have to eradicate them. Some students told me Iowa hemp wasn’t very potent anyway. That was the last we heard of marijuana as a noxious weed. If all administrative matters had been settled so easily maybe I could have gone back to biochemistry.

Having finished the new building, we were then happily installed in Bessey Hall. The name didn’t please students who had properly become enamored of George Washington Carver. But, the next new building on campus was properly so-named and it all worked out. Ironically, Bessey Hall, in the end couldn’t adequately house the seed lab so another building was needed a few years later. With modern facilities now available, it was time for modern administration. The historical botany, plant pathology, seed science and weed science combination of Bessey, Pammel and Melhus was rearranged and I was free!