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TI: Yeah, so late '70s, the 1980s, that's when Reagan was, some things were changing. So you're living down in the Tri-Cities, Hanford, down there. This is now early '80s, you're down there. Then what happens?

LI: Well, in those early '80s, my dad was selling to two different people, and one of the guys didn't pay him for half his crop, filed for bankruptcy. And so my dad decided that, you know, the only way I'm going to keep farming is if I become a grower-packer-shipper. And so we were growing and packing, but we didn't have a cold room, we didn't have cooling facilities. And so my brother Wayne left WSU a week before graduation to help my dad out. And I go, "Boy, what did you do that for?" He goes, "Well, you already have a job."

TI: Yeah, stop there... so your brother Wayne, he's getting a business or accounting...

LI: Accounting degree.

TI: Accounting degree. And you're saying one week before he would graduate, he left? I mean, was he on track to graduate if he'd literally stayed one more week?

LI: Oh, yeah. He was planning, prior to him coming home, he actually, in our apartment complex, he always had the study guide for the LSAT on the coffee table.

TI: So he was thinking of going to law school after business school? So what this says to me was, this was some kind of crisis, this was something big. It wasn't like he could wait another couple weeks for him to finish school.

LI: Well, he didn't want to finish school, I don't believe, because otherwise it would be harder for him to come back to the farm.

TI: So explain that. Why would having an accounting degree make it more difficult to come back to the farm?

LI: I don't know what was going through his head, but he worked so hard to do that. I think it was just easier to come home before graduation than after graduation.

TI: Is it almost like with an accounting degree, he knew there would be job opportunities?

LI: Outside of the farm.

TI: Outside of the farm. And maybe that your parents would make him take those jobs rather than come back to the farm?

LI: He kind of wrote me off because I already had a job. I said, "Well, why did you come back?" He goes, "Well, you already got a job," and Norman and Diane, they're still going to school. And so he goes, "Somebody has to help."

TI: And he said, "Mom and Dad need help because this packer/shipper kind of screwed the family and didn't pay."

LI: Right.

TI: So, "Dad's going to want to expand and he's going to need help doing that."

LI: Yeah. And my dad was the grower, so my brother Wayne said, "I'll be the sales guy." And so he served as the sales guy and the accountant.

TI: Well, so wait a minute. So you have the grower, then you have the sales guy, but you still need the packer/shipper.

LI: Well, yeah. They were kind of packing, and so that was kind of where I fit in, because I thought, "Well, I'll help you guys with the, building a hydrocooler." And shortly after I came home and built a hydrocooler, we needed to build this water jet transplanter. Shortly after that, the greenhouses burned to the ground and so I went from making twenty-five thousand dollars a year at Battelle, which I thought was the most money I'd ever made in my whole life, and getting done at three o'clock, to coming home to the farm. And I think I was putting in eight, maybe nine hours a day in at Battelle, but on the farm we were working fourteen, sixteen hour days for six thousand dollars a year. [Laughs] But we lived at home and Mom cooked for us, and Mom's a great cook, and we weren't married or anything like that. So yeah, but we built a business and we realized that we just took out the biggest loan we ever had in our whole life to build the cold room and the hydrocoolers. And so once the greenhouses burned down, we had to build those, too. But it was kind of a new chapter and we persevered.

TI: So this is really, literally "bet the farm" kind of, for the family. And you kind of walked through it matter-of-factly, but here, so I'm in your dad's shoes right now, and I'm thinking, okay, so my two oldest sons, you're a college graduate, you're working at one of the premier research jobs in the country, Battelle and Hanford. My other son, who's a week before graduating with an accounting degree, wants to go to law school, he's going to quit. Both of these sons, who had incredible potential and options to do other things, in some ways, things I sacrificed so much so that they could have, they're coming home. And we're going to take out this huge loan and we could fall flat on our face. It's a pretty... I mean, your dad's perspective, it's a pretty big thing. I'm guessing, just based on what I've heard, he wasn't totally comfortable that you guys did what you did.

LI: Well, he still had three other children in college. Well, two in college still and one coming up ready to graduate.

TI: Yeah, but I would have said, "So, Lon, keep your job, and if things go bad at the farm, you have to help the others," right? I mean, that's another way of thinking that would diversify the risk.

LI: Yeah, he could have said that, but he didn't. And I think he was happy to have us. He didn't force us to do it, he didn't ask us to do it. And I'm pretty sure he was flattered to have us back.

TI: Well, what about from your perspective then? What were you thinking? You're giving up a very promising career, and you mentioned, again, you're modest. You wrote a report that was highly regarded, people are interested, you're probably getting noticed. How did you feel about giving that up to come back to a very intense fourteen-hour-a-week farming, something that you weren't really planning to do?

LI: Yeah, but I mean, I probably did more engineering in the first three weeks back home on the farm than I did for three years at Battelle. Actual engineering, building things that I kind of wanted to do. And so when it came to doing this greenhouse project, there was kind of an opportunity for me. So I don't know, I didn't really regret it until I was at the YMCA one day and I heard this guy had just retired from Battelle Memorial Institute. And I went to the guy and said, "Hey, Vic, it's been kind of bothering me, but is it really true that after five years you're twenty-five percent vested, and after ten years you're fifty percent vested, and after twenty years you're a hundred percent vested in your retirement plan?" Which meant that at age sixty-five, you get a hundred percent of your top three years?

TI: Well, actually, probably for you, if you started when you're in your early twenties, at forty-five you would been fully vested.

LI: No, but at age sixty-five was their plan, but they said at a hundred percent of your top three years is what they would pay at age sixty-five. And the guy goes, "Yep, it's what I'm making." He goes, "I've already got a military retirement and I've got social security, and I've got a hundred percent of my top three years," he goes, "I can't spend that much money." But that was the first time that I actually realized what we walked away from. But it really didn't bother me that much because we helped our family and we expanded the farm. And like I said, we're getting recognition in doing other things. We built housing that was recognized. I was being asked to be on different boards. I had a lot of opportunities that I probably wouldn't have had if I'd stayed at Battelle. I might have had different opportunities, but it's kind of like, well, it's sometimes better to be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big pond. Yeah, so I think as far as recognition, I probably got more recognition at the farm than I would have at Battelle. Yeah, because the rest of the people that I was working with had their PhDs and they were talking about, they wrote books, chapters on how the earth was formed. And they were doing all these fancy-ass things, and I probably, I just had my bachelor's degree. When I look back, I'm going, I don't think I really walked away from anything. But I just ended up having to put a lot more hours in. But I think we had an opportunity to do a lot more for our communities, for our families.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.