ENDURING RELATIONSHIPS, LASTING LEGACY
Gerald Klonglan enjoys a warm send-off from members of the Shighatini Lutheran Parish in Tanzania. The associate dean emeritus heads his church’s outreach program for the parish.
By Melea Reicks Licht
In the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, Sophia drafts a letter to a friend. She thinks about translating each word from her native Swahili as she carefully prints in English.
“Thanks for your letter… I failure to answer your letter immediately because my last-born Aman was very serious sick with malaria. I always remember your kindness and love which you show me… Many regards to your family and friends.”
Building relationships like that between Sophia and her American friend Eileen are the heart of Gerald Klonglan’s work in Tanzania. In fact, they’ve been the heart of his life’s work.
As chair of the Bethesda Tanzania Ministry Team at Bethesda Lutheran Church in Ames Klonglan (’58 rural sociology, MS ’62, PhD ’63) fosters the relationship between the Shighatini Lutheran Parish in Tanzania and Bethesda.
Klonglan is a professor emeritus of sociology and former associate dean for national programs and research. His boundless enthusiasm hasn’t diminished since his retirement in 2001. He contines to put his idealism and practical know-how to work bringing people together across continents for the betterment of society.
“It’s about accompaniment—walking side-by-side,” Klonglan says. “This is not a business trip or a vacation, it is a human development trip for both them and us.”
With apparent joy, he recounts how the relationship has grown and how the Bethesda team supplies basic needs and assists residents of Shighatini while learning from them as well.
“We no longer send missionaries abroad to ‘educate.’ We work with residents to support their needs as a society,” he says. “We bring experts with us to focus on improving health, agriculture and education systems. Projects are not pursued unless both sides agree.”
Bethesda’s projects in Shighatini benefit all residents regardless of religious affiliation. Together they have established gravity flow water systems, improved dairy production, introduced crops and improved poultry production. Their efforts have been funded privately by the Bethesda congregation and gifts from The Rotary Club of Ames.
Klonglan also helped form a nonprofit organization, Empower Tanzania, to connect communities in the U.S. with those in rural Tanzania.
Prior to his work in Tanzania, Klonglan’s career in sociology took him around the world and often to the center of history.
He is most recently known for his work in college administration establishing relationships with historically black land-grant colleges and the tribal colleges. And his efforts with funding agencies led the college to become number one in the nation for earning U.S. Department of Agriculture external grants in 1999.
In retirement, Klonglan is an oft-requested speaker on the legacy of George Washington Carver, he hosts groups for the ISU Alumni Association and he continues to foster friendships and serve communities like Sophia’s.
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STORIES online extras:
- See slideshows by Klonglan on George Washington Carver and the history of Iowa State University.
- See photos from Tanzania communities impacted by Klonglan’s efforts and learn more about Empower Tanzania and Bethesda’s outreach.
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Online Extra:
Prior to his work in Tanzania, Gerald Klonglan’s career took him around the world and, often, to the center of history.
After the fall of Communism in the former Soviet Union he helped build agriculture colleges and extension systems in the 1990s. He traveled to China in 1982 where he co-taught the first sociology course in Beijing since the 1949 takeover by the Communists.
The day President John F. Kennedy was shot Klonglan was consulting with the Pentagon working with the Department of Defense to develop a public education campaign on how to survive nuclear war.
He helped create the forerunner of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and had a hand in creating educational programs about the dangers of smoking following the Surgeon General’s historic report on smoking and health in 1964.
Klonglan chuckles when he recalls his thesis research on finding the best way to introduce farmers to a new herbicide technology that would kill weeds before they emerged. “How would they know it was working without any dried up weeds in the field?” he jokes. It was a serious study in adoption diffusion, as was much of his work.
“I was fortunate to be working with young energetic people who were getting things done,” he says. “It was the nation’s Land Grant System that allowed us to accomplish so much. That is why it has been recreated all over the world.”
