The first thing you have to remember about Greg Bohlen is that he is the baby of the family, born twenty years after his oldest brother, Bob, and a full ten years after Chris, his other brother. His two sisters, Ginny and Susan, were born between Bob and Chris. So Greg was not only the caboose, he was so far back he was barely visible from the engine.
Their father ran a medium-sized corn and soybeans farm in the town of Moweaqua, Illinois. He was an educated man and an innovator, always testing the latest in equipment, farm products and techniques. A former schoolteacher, he was very much involved in the community and was once on the short list for the post of Director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture. To his children, he was a gentle but demanding teacher, and what he demanded most was hard work.
The first time I met Greg, he was eight years old. I was courting Susan and had been brought to the Bohlen farm in Moweaqua to meet the family. We had a delicious country-style dinner featuring fried chicken, but Greg had just a peanut butter sandwich, which was apparently about all he ate in those days. He would later develop a taste for a great many fine and exotic foods, not to mention wines, which, trust me, were never served in the strictly Methodist Bohlen family home.
None of the older kids could have gotten away with that sort of mealtime rebellion, but, like I said, Greg was a long way behind the head of the train, and got away with things because nobody up in the cab much cared.
The second thing to remember is that the four older Bohlen children were spectacular successes, in school and life. They harvested A’s like their father did corn, won scholarships and prizes, starred on basketball and football teams. Greg – not so much. When his mother scolded him and said he might not get into college if he didn’t improve his grades, he displayed a precocious talent for demographics and strategic thinking, shrugged and said, “By the time I’m ready to go to college, they’ll be begging for students.” Since he was born the year after the Baby Boom ended, he was pretty much right.
As his high school graduation date neared, he sent out the traditional monogrammed invitations (Big gold “M” engraved on the front, his card stuck on the inside and tissue paper between the pages). Then he watched, crushed, as each of his brothers and sisters sent regrets. None of them could attend. His mother reported he was so despondent he talked of not even going to the ceremony.
In those days, airlines would deliver packages – in pre-internet times, it was the only way you could get something from here to there on the same day – and the afternoon before the graduation, Ozark Airlines* called and asked for Greg. He had a package on the evening flight to Decatur, the agent said. When he got to baggage claim, there was no package, but there was Susan, who had flown in from Maryland. By the next afternoon the other three had arrived, too, from Michigan, Missouri and Ohio.
After the ceremony, there was a big family party at the farm. At one point, eighty-something-year-old Grandmother Bohlen said to Susan, “You know, I never thought I’d live long enough to see Greg graduate from high school,” and Susan replied, “None of us thought we’d live long enough to see Greg graduate from high school.” It was that kind of a family – everyone was fair game for being poked fun at, and the butt of practical jokes, but when they were needed, they were always there for each other.
So Greg, following the family tradition, went on to the University of Illinois, got his degree and stayed on to earn an MBA.
Brother Bob made a fortune in the cattle business, then sold his whole herd when the tax policy changed and made a bigger fortune in real estate, but Greg was the best farmer of the brood. One of the worst jobs on the farm was called “going through beans,” which meant walking row by row through acres of soybeans pulling weeds – dirty, dusty hard work, but the four older children all did it summer after hot, sticky summer. Greg, instead, invented the Bean Buggy, a self-propelled vehicle precisely sized to cover six rows of beans at a time. No walking. The operator simply reached out from the buggy seat and pulled the weeds.
Young Greg was a hard worker, and an innovator, qualities now on display daily at Union Grove Farm, which offers guided tours and even whole experiences, including helping herd the sheep, but not, thank goodness, going through beans. Click here for more information or to buy a ticket.
*Ozark Airlines is long gone, and little missed. The company logo, emblazoned on each plane, featured three swallows, and was commonly referred to as “gulp, gulp, gulp.”
