Santa Rosa High School - Echo Yearbook (Santa Rosa, CA)

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THE ECHO OF THE SANTA ROSA HIGH SCHOOL came in the young man’s life. For sometime he had heen watching very closely the potatoes in his garden, The green tops were not all alike, and one of them had something not found in any of the others. It was a seed ball. Mr. Burbank watched this very carefully and one day he said to himself. “If I plant this seedball, quite different po- iatoes will grow from it than from the other potatoes. The country was nearly on the verge of a potato famine. It is said today that our country has gained twenty millions of dollars through Mr. Burbank’s discovery, while he himself sold the seed he had raised for one hundred and fifty dollars. Not long afterwards, at the age of twenty-one, he started for California, taking with him ten of his new potatoes. After reaching San Francisco, it was to our city of Santa Rosa that this man, whom the world honors as a benefactor of mankind, came and to this day makes his home here. Not being able to hire lodgings ,he slept in a damp room above a steaming hot house. This constant exposure and lack of proper nourishment brought on a fever. A poor woman in the neighborhood found him one day in such condition. She insisted in sharing with him the small portion of milk which she could afford to spare from the one cow that supplied her family. He protested against taking it because he might never be able to repay her, and there was scant hope to do it, but the woman insisted, and the pint of milk a day which she brought him saved the life of this great man. The man who was to become the foremost figure in the world in his line of work, and who was to pave the way by his own discoveries and creations, who had already done what would gain for his country ‘millions of dollars, was a stranger in a strange land, close to starvation, penniless, being kept alive only by the generosity of a poor woman. Never for an instant did this heroic figure lose hope, never once did he swerve from the path he had marked out. It was a wan and haggard figure that rose once more to start work.

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THE ECHO OF THE SANTA ROSA HIGH SCHOOL but not one in a hundred thousand has or will use them with such intelligence and skill as this great Magician of California. One may ask, who is this great man? The name which to- day rings in every ear is Luther Burbank. He was born in Lan- caster, Worcester County, Massachusetts, on March 7, 1849, the day which California, and especially Santa Rosa, celebrate an- nually. His ancestry is Scotch-English. He was educated in the common schools and in the academy. During his! boyhood he worked in the Ames Plow Factory. Mr. Burbank enjoyed boys’ sports, too. He played games. He fished and hunted; but he was happiest when in the com- pany of Nature herself. His eyes were so bright they saw many things that others passed by. From his childhood Burbank was passionately devoted to flowers and to all forms of plant life. His mother and sisters had noticed that whenever he was given a flower, while lying in his cradle, he always held it with certain childish tenderness, never crushing nor dropping it but keeping it, if allowed, until its bloom was faded or its fragrance gone. One day when his sister had given him a flower he held it in his usual earnestness until a petal fell off. Then, with infinite childish patience, he strove to put the petal back in place and thus restore the flower. hen a little older and able to toddle about, he chose plants for pets instead of animals. He was given a plant in a pot, so-called lobster cactus as the variety of cactus was locally known, and for hours at a time he trudged about house and yard carrying the cactus plant in his little arms. One day he stumbled and fell, broke the plant from. its stem and destroyed the pot. It was a day of great sadness, ior he greived so over the loss of the pet plant as another child would have greived over the death of a bird or a faithful dog. When the time came for him to choose his life-work, he desired to help Nature make old things better than they were, and new things better than the old. He began to raise seeds and vegetables in a little market-garden, and then a great day

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THE ECHO OF THE SANTA ROSA HIGH SCHOOL Every evening saw him tired, yet happy and contented. He se- cured work very easily now . One day an order came from a man who wished to start an orchard for growing prunes. He asked Mr. Burbank for twenty thousand young prune trees. He must have them ready in nine months. “Ill fill that order,” the young nurseryman said. Any one else would require two and a half years to get so many trees ready for planting. With haste he traversed the com- munity to find men and boys to plant almonds. It was late in ithe seasom and almond trees were the ones that would bloom the quickest. In a short time the scions were beginning to bud. When the nine months came to an end, behold! there were twenty thousand prune trees ready for the orchardist. To- day this orchard is full grown and one of the richest orchards of the community. From this time on Mr. Burbank was more successful in his business. He sold his nursery and began the work that was dearest to his heart. He took fruits and flowers and from these he made others that were better and ‘more beautiful. Slowly bul surely he met with success, and people all over; the world began to hear of Luther Burbank, the wonderful things he was doing in Santa Rosa. It is true that today Santa Rosa is better known because it is the home of the great wonder worker. A half century after Mr. Burbank broke his pet Cactus plant he created a series of thornless, edible cacti, not only pro- viding a a vast reservoir of food for man and and for un- counted millions of animals, but paving the way for the recla- mation of the desert places of the earth. That which was once a daugerous foe of man and beast became, through Mr. Bur- bank, a stanch friend. Better still, if it could only bear fruit that would be good to eat, it would furnish food to animals and travelers crossing the desert. Mr. Burbank worked and worked until he produced the delicious pink fruit of the cactus. On the hillside near Mr. Burbank’s New England home