FAITH, HOPE, AND HEIFERS
EBY, KERMIT
Faith, Hope, and Heifers By KERMIT EBY TEN years ago, when we were expecting the last addition to our family, my wife and I agreed that should it be a boy, we would name him Daniel West Eby. By...
...When UNRAA ended, the project received one of its severest setbacks...
...Hence, Brethren boys welcomed Brethren heifers, only to learn that caring for cows in Puerto Rico where there were only hovels and little feed was not like running a mid-west dairy farm...
...He was then in Spain on a relief mission for the American Friends and the Brethren...
...Moreover, some of the hungry might be our enemies...
...A pleasant way to start a revolution, isn't it...
...II But Dan West persisted, both within and outside Brethren circles...
...The world was at war and shipping space could not be spared to carry heifers to the hungry...
...The conversation naturally turned toward the starving children of Spain...
...Americans were bent on victory, not on ameliorating the suffering of the victims of the war...
...Sometimes," Dan often told me, "I despaired of ever seeing it come true...
...and brotherhood takes on meaning because first a simple Brethren dreamer and then a Church realized that brotherhood knew no boundaries...
...In my world the needs of women and children transcend their politics...
...The idea for the heifer project first came to Dan West in the autumn of 1937...
...No," Dan replied...
...And so once more the word became flesh...
...With the development of UNNRA in 1946 and the official underwriting of shipments to Europe, the U. S. government sent cattle to Europe in greater numbers than any or all volunteer groups were capable of doing...
...Today the Mennonite, Catholic, Northern Baptist, Evangelical and Reformed, Methodist, and many other churches are working in the Heifer Project...
...At present, the heifer project is concentrating its effort on the shipment of cattle to Western Germany...
...2. Buy a heifer and contribute her to the Heifer Project Committee...
...Dan tried to help the victims of war wherever there was suffering, be it on the Republican or the Franco side...
...Read that autumn, the following idea was born...
...Some were returned to their donors...
...Out of this combination of the mystical and the practical the "Heifers for Europe and the World" program was born...
...Cattle took too much to feed...
...Ill By 1945, the project had become so big it needed a full-time director...
...Read was consulted on every move...
...Heifers, unlike bombs, are persona], particularly if you bring them up or sacrifice for them...
...During the war many Brethren CO's wanted to do relief work in Europe and Asia but were denied the opportunity...
...3. Send a contribution to the Heifer Project Committee...
...He was director of education and research for the CIO, a member of the U. S. Commission for the Reorganization of Education in Japan, a special representative in Europe of the National Commission of Unesco, a member of the Friends' Goodwill Mission to the Orient, and a member of the Federal Advisory Committee for the U. S. Office of Education...
...There is no red tape that cannot be cut, and people are always more important than the brass," says Ben...
...The program is rooted in the simple belief that milk knows no politics, that Communist babies are not born flying the hammer and sickle any more than ours are born computing compound interest...
...The project committee already has 10,000 requests from needy families...
...Dan West is a modern mystic, yet, like all his Brethren forbears, practical...
...The entire world went to war, and Spain's tragic victims were multiplied a thousand-fold...
...The Brethren, however, persisted...
...Sent away to help the needy, a . part of you goes along...
...O. E. Read, chief of the Bureau of Dairy Industry of the LI...
...By then we had already met many of the so-called great of the earth and none of them approximated the qualities of character manifested in the dreams and life of Dan West, Brethren prophet...
...But you are not going to send them over on the Franco side...
...Plans are under way to send relief workers and goats just as was done in Puerto Rico...
...These are gifts...
...I had temporarily forgotten that all starving babies were the same to Dan...
...Your program of giving heifer calves to be delivered after the war is a most excellent one, but who knows when this terrible disaster will subside...
...Now, with the destruction in Korea, great new needs must be met...
...The cows needed shelter and feed...
...Why, I was just talking to my wife a few weeks ago about this kind of thing...
...She was a Guernsey named "Faith...
...Instead, they went to Castenar, Puerto Rico, and opened a public service project...
...The cows would give milk and the Spanish people could then feed their own children...
...Why not," he wondered, "bring cows into Spain to eat the grass...
...It is estimated that of the seven or eight million refugees in the American, British, and French zones, 450,000 of these families are homeless farmers...
...Those wishing to help can: 1. Raise a heifer and ship her to a collection center...
...With proper planning, 50,000 of these might be rehabilitated on German soil in the Western Zone...
...I'll help you on the job...
...Keeping alive the dream which haunted him, Dan brought it before the Committee on Spain, a group made up of representatives of the Brethren, Friends, Mennonites, and Federal Council of Churches, in February, 1938...
...Eby is an ordained minister of the Brethren Church...
...5. Interest your friends, not overlooking the children, in any or all of the above...
...Realizing the Brethren interest in getting cattle to Europe and conscious that competent seagoing cowboys were hard to get, the government asked the Brethren for farmers in exchange for shipping Brethren cattle without cost...
...God bless you," was Dr...
...terested, but the idea did not take on concrete shape...
...He called on the powerful, and an occasional ship was secured...
...He loves to laugh about the first "Heifers to Europe": "six bulls to Greece," and how he insisted that the rebels be given their share, only to be met by armed riflemen as he walked unarmed into their mountain hide-out, to the amazement of the rebels...
...No matter how great the pressure of his work as a roving eduCfttor for Brethren values, he then and now insists on time to live and work with his sons and daughter...
...Teachers and doctors volunteered to go to Puerto Rico—and now Castenar is a model community...
...Paradoxical, wasn't it, that ships were hard to get when hundreds were being stored in moth balls...
...he asked...
...New Windsor, Md...
...Then," said Dan, "I'm sorry, we can't work together...
...There were some irrigation ditches in the vicinity and the idea returned: "Why not get cows here to help the Spanish people feed their own babies after the war...
...These include heifers, bulls, horses, and goats...
...Received by fellow men in need, the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man is reaffirmed...
...If you are, I'm opposed...
...You are not going to sell these animals, are you...
...The man who lived and suffered with the women and children of Spain fought for needy children everywhere...
...Already a doctor is at work there...
...A heifer costs about $175 to $200...
...We must feed the hungry everywhere...
...Once begun, the program gained momentum...
...It was powdered milk from Holland, mixed with water...
...The project is now and always has been bigger than the Brethren...
...Before they mature and become cows (giving their new host not only milk but the beginnings of a dairy herd) they become pets...
...Giving heifers, Brethren families believed, was simply putting into practice the story of the judgement...
...In November, 1941, while in Washington, Dan introduced the idea to Dr...
...Moved by Dan's story, Pyke said, "Yes, I know where you can get some cows for Spain...
...As a consequence, almost a thousand Brethren farmers, old and young, saw first hand the suffering war brings, and incidentally gained a world outlook...
...Ben Bushong refused to take a no...
...I well remember those days, for a letter of mine including the foolish sentence, "There is no doubt where your sympathies lie," got into the hands of a Franco censor and almost resulted in ending Dan's work of mercy...
...Good," Dan replied...
...Dan brought up the need for cattle...
...So the Brethren became planners...
...4. Donate a heifer ready to ship from the herd...
...Ben Bushong, a Lancaster County dairy farmer, was chosen...
...In May, 1942, the Men's Work Cabinet of Northern Indiana, a local arm of the Brethren Service Committee, asked Dan to report on the idea before a meeting of the Brethren men of Northern Indiana...
...Ben knew cattle and the Brethren...
...In January of 1938 Dan went to London where he met Geoffrey Pyke, a labor editor...
...Ben's adventures in Greece and Ethiopia are more exciting than fiction...
...Of the 1,200 heifers planned for this program 600 have been shipped to date...
...Shelter and feed demanded a higher income and revitalized agriculture, which in turn were only possible if the people were healthy and educated...
...How often when I think of Dan I am reminded of those of us who give so much time to secondary institutions (unions and political parties) that we sacrifice the primary ones of home and family...
...These were Dan's neighbors and friends, for despite the fact that Dan's arena of action was the world, he had never really left home—a farm between Goshen and Elkhart, Ind...
...Sure," said Dan...
...He introduced Dan to Leslie Wheeler, director of the Office of Agricultural Relations, who enthusiastically endorsed the idea and brought up the possibility that the government ship the cattle...
...Pyke queried...
...In some places goats were more practical...
...If heifer calves or steer calves are designated as gifts to feed hungry people wherever they might be and marketed and the money saved to meet whatever need you would want to sponsor after the war, other calves could be saved and brought along where peace is made and the need is greatest...
...In 1948 a few goats were sent to Germany, and ill 1950 2,700 goats to Okinawa...
...S. Department of Agriculture...
...Virgil Mock of New Paris, Ind., gave the first heifer to Dan and the Service Committee...
...For several years Dr...
...In July, 1944, the first heifers were shipped to Puerto Rico...
...In June, 1942, at Asheville, N. C, the Brethren Service Committee approved the project and elected a committee to work out plans in northern Indiana...
...Labor, farm, civic, and service groups too, have helped, and so has Hollywood...
...The Church of the Brethren and the Heifer Project Committee have prepared literature for these purposes for both children and adults...
...Soon other individuals and churches joined in the common enterprise...
...Later, in January, 1938, at Murcia, Spain (on the Loyalist side), he saw a long line of young and old folks waiting for bottles of milk for babies at home...
...Some of the heifers were sold...
...1941, more tragic events in the world forced the starving children of Spain into the background...
...It was while he was watching the starving children on the Franco side that he noticed children were hungry in the midst of plentiful grass...
...Over 700 heifers were collected in some 24 farms, but there was no shipping space...
...Well, if you're going to send one cow to Franco, I won't help," Pyke concluded...
...Health and education could be achieved only if there were teachers and doctors...
...O. W. Stine of the Rock Run Congregation provided the feed, and his son cared for her until she was sent to Puerto Rico...
...In a way, the government patterned its cattle program after the Brethren's...
...From February, 1938, to May...
...In a letter written to Dan by Dr...
...The early war years were difficult ones, indeed, for one with a vision like Dan's...
...In 1948 heifers went to Italy and bulls to Japan to breed up the quality of local cattle...
...Since the first shipment in 1944, more than 11,000 animals have been shipped to approximately 20 different needy countries in the world...
...Now he knows international politics and the world...
...Becoming a partner in the heifer project is simple...
...The group was inKERMIT EBY, professor in the social sciences at the University of Chicago, has been active in labor, church, and educational activities...
...Read was enthusiastic...
...as I stated to you Saturday, your people can do a great service in increasing your dairy production right now and adding to the stockpile of food [evaporated milk] so that it will be ready when delivery is possible...
...After five years, the dream was approaching realization...
...In the meantime, Brethren investigation in Puerto Rico brought back stories of the need which existed in the "India of the United States...
...Read's answer...
...Today, there is scarcely a Brethren church with a member who has not been abroad...
...Some churches dedicated their cattle in a religious service...
Vol. 15 • August 1951 • No. 8
