This past weekend we were in Iowa for the wedding of my sister’s daughter. The wedding was in Des Moines and yes it was saturated there with all the rain they have had lately. God held the storms back a bit on Saturday, so the bride and groom didn't have to fight downpours or tornadoes. What blessed events wedding are!
I was regretting that we were only able to be there for the weekend event, because it would been interesting to have gone up to NE Iowa where Doug’s grandparents were born. I thought that surely we would meet someone at this wedding that knew of those little towns where the Browns and Whites had lived. But, no one at the wedding had really heard of Cresco or Volga City.
With the storms yesterday, I wasn’t sure we would make it back from Iowa last night but fate was kind to us and despite the delayed and cancelled flights aplenty, we arrived home last night only an hour later than expected.
Now, this is what is interesting about today. I’ve been having trouble with the sprinkler system and had made an appointment weeks ago for a local repairman to have a look at it today. It doesn’t rain in Sacramento in the summer, so the sprinkler system is essential. Anyway Nels, the sprinkler guy who happens to live not far from us stopped by this morning to give his assessment of the problem. He mentioned something about how the weather was beginning to get hot and how Governor Schwarzenegger had declared that California was in a drought. I quipped back that I had seen plenty of rain and weather in Iowa over the weekend. Then, he told me that his family had come from NE Iowa. So, I asked if he had heard of Cresco and remarkably he had, because his mother and father came from a little town very close to Cresco. I told him how no one at the Iowa wedding had seemed to have heard of Cresco, and he said, “Nobody’s heard of Cresco or New Hampton” (the town his family was from.) He was so excited he almost called up one of his relatives right then and there to see if the family knew of the Doug’s grandparents’ families, the Browns, the Whites, and the Whitfords.
This wasn’t the only connection, sprinkler man Nels Borlaug and I discovered. He had mentioned that a relative from Iowa had won the Nobel Prize; so later I asked him what type of Nobel Prize this cousin had won. Well, it turns out that his father’s cousin, Norman Borlaug, was a famous agronomist and won the Nobel Peace prize for his work in formulating high yielding crops, saving third world countries like India and Pakistan from deathly famines. In Pakistan the wheat yield actually doubled from 1965-1970! This was part of what we refer to today as the Green Revolution. Doug’s dad, Dorsey, had been an agriculture teacher, and later was involved in teacher education at UC Davis in the 1960’s. In 1964 Dorsey became a part of the Green Revolution as a trainer and education expert, moving the family to Pakistan when Doug was about 16 years old.
Nels was able to fix the sprinklers and hopefully the rain has let up in Des Moines. And…. even though I didn’t find a family history connection this weekend in Iowa, I did find one at home.
-Mary
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