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\nBadly wounded feet wouldn\u2019t prevent Roy Ogle from scouting fields of peas with Chris Ray.
\nRoy \u2014 49 years Chris\u2019s senior \u2014 had retired from Clemson three years before Chris arrived on campus as an undergraduate in 1990 to study horticulture. Chris planned to return to the family vegetable farm in Orangeburg County after graduation. A World War II veteran from Tennessee, Roy never intended to come to Clemson at all.
\nNeither would ever leave.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nWhile generations apart, Roy and Chris share a love of Southern peas, gardening and old-fashioned plant breeding \u2014 crossing the flowers of plants with desirable traits and growing them over and over to develop the heartiest, tastiest, most profitable varieties.
\nThe unlikely pair formed a strong bond in the campus farmland affectionately referred to as \u201cthe Bottoms,\u201d looking for pea plants most resistant to disease and insects. This land on the southern end of campus, just across Perimeter Road, was once farmed by University founder Thomas Green Clemson. Today, it\u2019s a fertile bed for agricultural research.<\/p>\n\nA plant breeder, Roy created pea and sweet potato varieties in those fields that remain popular in gardens and roadside stands throughout South Carolina even today \u2014 a rarity, an anomaly really, for a career field that\u2019s all about producing new and better varieties.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
If you eat peas or sweet potatoes grown in South Carolina or the Southeast, you\u2019ve tasted Roy\u2019s work.
\n\u201cThe greatest compliment I ever received \u2026 my wife had introduced me to a senator,\u201d Roy recalls. \u201cHe looked at me and said, \u2018So you\u2019re Roy Ogle.\u2019 I said, \u2018Guilty.\u2019 He said, \u2018Your reputation precedes you. I know all about those peas.\u2019 He obviously grew them, you know.
\n\u201cHe said, \u2018You know, you are exactly what Thomas Green Clemson expected out of Clemson University. He expected a young professor that would work with students and at the same time help the farmers have a better life.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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A WWII veteran and hero<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div>
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Roy talks about landing in France after D-Day.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>
\nRoy talks about entering a Nazi concentration camp.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/p><\/div>
As a young man, Roy enlisted in the Army Reserves during his freshman year at the University of Tennessee, hoping to avoid the draft. Just six months later, he was drafted.<\/p>\n
\nRoy landed at Omaha Beach in November 1944, five months after D-Day, as a member of the 84th Infantry Division. The unit moved eastward through Paris and joined combat at the \u201cSiegfried Line.\u201d The 84th Division marched north to Marche, Belgium. On the second day it started snowing, and it snowed every day for six weeks.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Snow seeped into Roy\u2019s leather combat boots. While moving toward enemy lines, a tree burst nearby. Roy was hit with shrapnel that ripped through several layers of jackets and clothing, a thick cotton armor that likely saved his life.
\nRoy would spend two weeks in a military hospital. The doctor largely ignored the shrapnel wound in his chest, more concerned with his right foot, which had turned black. The doctor considered amputating the foot, but opted against it as color returned a week later.
\n\u201cThey called it trench foot during World War I. During World War II, they called it frost bite,\u201d Roy says, wearing sandals to help alleviate the pain and swelling in his feet. He continues to receive treatment.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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All I ever wanted to do<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div>
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\nAs a child, Roy learned to grow broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries, cherries and all sorts of fruits and vegetables from his father, a farm foreman at the University of Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station. This was the Great Depression. Money was tight. Food was not. \u201cI think my interest (in agriculture) stemmed from the fact that he just felt it was a good life. It was a good one to follow,\u201d Roy says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Rejecting offers for a long military career, Roy was discharged in 1946. He returned to the University of Tennessee to study plant breeding. \u201cThat\u2019s all I ever wanted to do, and that\u2019s all I ever really did, to tell you the truth of the matter,\u201d he says.
\nAfter graduating from the University of Tennessee, Roy continued his dream of a career in plant breeding, completing his master\u2019s degree from the University of Delaware in one year. He earned his doctorate at the University of Maryland in 1952 and later took a job as a plant breeder at the University of Rhode Island.
\nSeveral years later, Roy received a call from a department chair at Clemson who had heard Roy present a paper on his thesis. Roy said he was offered a job without an interview. He had never visited campus.
\n\u201cI thought that was just funny that I would take a job at a school I\u2019d never even considered. He told me what it was like, and I could not have made a better move. It was a perfect spot,\u201d Roy says.
\nA former adviser at the University of Maryland who had worked at Clemson previously himself, suggested Roy take the job but look to advance elsewhere after three years, Roy says. That was 1957. Roy was 34. He would spend the rest of his career in regalia and orange.
\n\u201cHe visited me after three years, he looked at me and said \u2014 I had built a new house, by the way \u2014 he looked at me and he said, \u2018You\u2019re not going to leave are you?\u2019 And I said \u2018No, I like it too much here.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\u201cThe thing I discovered about Clemson when I first came here was the esprit de corps. I have never seen a school with better esprit de corps than Clemson University. It\u2019s just the students themselves that make up the difference,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Roy and his wife moved to an assisted living facility in Chattanooga, Tenn., in 2015 to be closer to their children, following an automobile accident. \u201cI miss Clemson every day,\u201d Roy says.<\/p>\n
\nHe\u2019s 93 now.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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Roy and Chris<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div>
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\nOn a recent weekday at the assisted-living home, Roy introduces Chris Ray to everyone who enters the room, sounding like a proud father when explaining Chris\u2019s leadership role at Clemson and how difficult it must have been to schedule this visit to Tennessee. Chris now is director of the Clemson Experiment Station, which conducts research in laboratories, farms and forests on the Clemson campus and at six research and education centers throughout South Carolina.
\nThe two perk up when discussing the favorable traits of plant varieties. \u201cSilver King\u201d sweet corn retains its sweetness after being picked, while the sugars in other varieties more quickly turn into starch and lose flavor. \u201cPark\u2019s Whopper\u201d tomatoes produce large fruits, perfectly sized for slicing on sandwiches. \u201cCherokee\u201d sweet potatoes, which are credited to Roy, are able to produce sprouts on numerous stems, while other varieties only produce on the plant\u2019s central stem.<\/p>\n\nRoy may be best known for his work with peas. During his 30 years at Clemson, Roy bred hundreds of crosses of Southern peas. Peas were important for South Carolina families, particularly in rural areas and in times of financial stress. They were hardy, easy to grow. They were an inexpensive food source and, therefore, a staple in South Carolina gardens.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u201cI was amazed at how many people grew Southern peas in South Carolina. Just about everybody,\u201d Roy says. \u201cAnd they\u2019d all tell me, if I introduced myself to somebody, they\u2019d say, \u2018Oh I know you. You\u2019re the one who introduced those peas.\u2019\u201d Chris learned of Roy\u2019s reputation shortly after arriving on campus.
\n\u201cHe developed the best pea varieties ever released by Clemson University \u2014 Hercules, Colossus, Clemson Purple Hull,\u201d Chris says.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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