Remembering Benard Stromberg
By JEFF DAVIDSON
Greenwood County Extension Agent
We laid him to rest the day after New Year's. It was not a sad funeral. Born the same year as the Titanic went down, he was 91 years young. He knew me for 52 years that I can remember. He always was there, always the good neighbor.
Born on the Marion County family farm where he would live for 91 years, by the time he was in his early teens, he had lost a father, brother, and stepfather. That left him and his mother to run a dairy business, and he would milk the cows, bottle the milk, and deliver it to customers before school. He made a career of the dairy business, operating it for over 50 years.
In rural America, the "neighbor" is an integral part of the community structure, and often an important part of social life, including influencing the upbringing of neighboring children. I would have to say that Benard, the neighbor, had a very positive influence on me as a young man, and gave me a respect for those that I neighbor with. You will hear many references to the neighbor at the coffee shop or the sale barn café, sometimes positive comments, but unfortunately, often negative ones. "It's the neighbor's fault that the fence is bad, that I have weeds in my pasture, and it must have been the neighbor's bull that sired that runt calf." But I had the fortune of growing up next to a neighbor who always was there to lend a hand, more than willing to trade a little more work than what you could give back.
Today's technology has changed neighboring. As with all technology, there is the good side and the bad. With a computer, you can become acquainted and "neighbor" with people across the country, or even in other countries, sharing information, encouragement, and good business ideas. The downside is, with today's busy lifestyle, we might drive by the next-door neighbor day after day and hardly know them.
Benard and my dad swapped work, machinery, and general farm supplies for the active farming years of their 53 years of neighboring. When I was in high school, my first-off-the-farm job was milking Benard's cows so he would have a chance to get away for two or three days. It was my first experience at getting up well before daylight for the morning milking, and quitting after dark following the evening chores.
Benard did little traveling. To my knowledge, he never crossed the state line. He saw little of the world, content to live in the best part of it. Those who shared his world with him only will have kind words for this man who would eagerly share his farming knowledge, his knowledge of dairy cattle, and his deep religious faith. Some would say that he was the type who would "do anything for you, give you the shirt off his back." I say that he did one better than that. He would do something for you, but in the process, he would explain how to do it so that you could be self-sufficient with the process from then on. Come to think of it, by his example, he planted a seed and inspired a certain neighbor kid to become a county extension agent.
I'll always remember Benard, and for me, he is the example of what a true neighbor ought to be. We are all neighbors to someone, and with Benard's death, I have resolved to be a better neighbor to those around me.
It would be cliché to say "they don't make 'em like him anymore," but the fact is, "they" don't make people, people make themselves. Benard was the best of architects.
