Nick Ann Street

The day passed with little fanfare. My mom, siblings, and I thought that we should have a party. Some of his colleagues and friends repeatedly asked my mom when it was going to be. She had to reply, “there won’t be one”. Dad didn’t want one. That didn’t really shock me. That’s not his style. Although there are lots of us who do, he likely doesn’t believe that there are people who want to pay tribute to his career. He also doesn’t like being the center of attention. He would prefer a nice quiet dinner with family. And that’s exactly what he and mom did last night.

Still, I feel the desire to honor this man’s career. I want to give him something to mark the occasion. But I am on disability. I can’t buy him a gold watch or a vacation to the Caribbean. Just about all I can do is type. One of the lessons he taught me was to use what you have been blessed with. So I am going to take this opportunity to tell you about my dad.

Working as an area manager for Vigortone wasn’t the only job for my dad. He and my mom also raised livestock and grain. I think that’s what ultimately made him a good salesman. He understood the challenges and concerns facing the farmers he was working with. their problems were his problems. His solutions could be their solutions.

When I was growing up, sometimes I would ride along to his clients. I never really learned anything about calculating feed rations, but I learned a lot about how to interact with people. Stereotypes will tell you that farmers are all alike. My dad understands that their personalities can be as diverse as any other segment of the population. The truly beautiful thing was his ability to recognize that and interact with them accordingly.

Some of his clients were obviously always in a hurry and didn’t want to spend much time with a salesman that drove in the yard. But most of them were ready to chat. I think that’s because they learned that dad is a good listener. He’s not going to dominate a conversation and always lent a sympathetic ear. He would talk for an hour with a guy who just had a field hailed out and needed to vent. He might spend another hour at the next farm eating pie and taking about the futures market. He might spend five minutes at each place talking actual Vigortone business, but I came to understand that he was cultivating relationships. relationships that lasted.

The ability to maintain those relationships made dad good at his job. It’s also why he got to keep his job. As Vigortone was bought and sold by different parent companies and family farms began disappearing, the company made cutbacks. Dad was spared but his territory expanded. When I was growing up, he rarely traveled more than an hour from home. Now he had to go three hours to get to some of his clients. After having given up tobacco years ago, he turned to sunflower seeds to help keep him company on those lonely South Dakota highways.

When he got home after a day on the road, it wasn’t time to relax. There was always a barn to be cleaned or some other chore on the farm. After supper, it was time for bookwork and phone calls. Those could last until the ten o’clock news. The next morning he might take a load of pigs to market before going off again to Vigortone, a word that was a noun, verb, and adjective in our house.

He did all of this without complaint. Sure, he grumbled about filing reports or learning a new computer program. But he never complained about having to work hard. Never complained that he missed out on going to college because his brother got in an accident. Never complained that he had to have another job in addition to farming. Had it not been for the equally hard work of my mom, he wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. Thirty-seven years ago, they were raising four children and needed more money. That extra money ultimately helped to put five of us through college.

Vigortone is without a loyal, hard-working, honest employee today. But I still have my role model. He taught me how to treat people. He taught me how to live as a Christian man in my daily work. He taught me the importance of giving maximum effort. He did it not with words, but with actions.

Congratulations dad. I am proud of you. I love you.