University of Massachusetts Amherst - Index Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

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DEDICATION Fred Coleman Sears was horn May 11, 1866, in Lexington, Mass., of a sea faring family. While he was yet quite young, his parents tooX him. to their new home on the plains of Kansas, a territory at that time populated nuxinly by coyotes, jacX rabbits, buffalo, and Indians. Here he spent his boyhood, on the far American frontier, with all its romantic experiences. Soon after graduating from the Kansas State Agricultural College in 1892, he went to ? iova Scotia where for ten years he was engaged in teaching and extension worl{, mainly in pomological lines. This residence of a decade under the British flag also made its deep impression on him.. In 1907, he transferred his activities to Mas- sachusetts, serving here since then as Professor of Pomology at M.S.C. During all of this period he has ept in notably close con tact with the fruit growers of J ew Eng}xind, by whom he is held in High esteem. Several years ago he fell in with Sir Wilfred Grenfell, noted doctor and missionary to Labrador, and for seven successive sum,mers he has gone to Labrador or its neighborhood, assisting in the wor of the Grenfell Mission. Chec ing over this brief chronology, it is easy to see that, begins ning with a sea going background, teaching for ten years in a foreign land, serving as college professor for more than a quarter of a century in T ew England, and joining in a highly eifective missionary enterprise in Labrador, Fred Sears has led an active and varied life. He has been constantly in touch with rugged realities and major enterprises. If he is sometimes impatient with pious generalities, with theoretical palaver, with mere tal , and

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FRED C. SEARS

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if he lool{s rather for prompt and practical action, the reason stands revealed. In 1897, Mr. Sears married his college classmate, Ruth Sto es, who moved forward to the next world in 1924. Twin daughters, horn in 1907, constitute his remaining family. In Amherst, Mr. Sears is My own as an active and useful citizen of the cxymm,unity, a leader in his church, in the ' Masonic fra ternity and in other useful movem,ents. At the State College, he is recognized as an outstanding man in his professional field, hut he hears an equally high reputation for helpful activities in many different directions. Iium.anly speal ng — very humanly — he is one of the landma,r s of the campus. — Fran A. Waugjh. UHCLE FREDDIE One great trouhle amxm,g the fishermen of T orth 7S[eiv ound- land and Labrador used to he the alarming amount of illness disahility due to food deficiency diseases. We surgeons recognized early that only half the tasl{ hefore us was the treatment of patients who came to our hospitals sujfering from, heriAjeri, scurvy, rickets, and tuherculosis — that ' melancholy hrood. The real challenge was to love our neighbors in the more difficult hut more common ' sense way of preventing their ever having to con tract these ailments. C insequently, when, m xny years ago. Professor Sears offered to come T orth each sum,m,er as a volunteer worker in the Grenfell Association, and to see what our ground and clinuxte were capa