University of Minnesota School of Agriculture - Agrarian Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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A Brief Statement on the Early Life of Dean Walter Coffey EAN WALTER C. COFFEY was born on a farm near Hartsville, Indiana, on February 1, 1877. His father, Calvin A. Coffey, was of southern birth and parentage and was a man of unusually strong religious and political convic- tions. Josephine Coffey was the typical American mother whose primary interest rested with her husband and children. To her sacrifice was nothing when some member of her family benefited by it. There were in all six children in the Coffey family, five of whom still survive. The eldest son died in infancy leaving Dean Coffey the oldest of three living brothers. Dean Coffey spent his boyhood days on an Indiana farm where the everyday neces- sities of life were plentiful, but where luxuries were the exception rather than the rule. It was a boyhood environment productive of ruddy health and sturdy qualities. Facilities for the early education of the Coffey family were not of the best grade. Elementary training was administered in the red brick district school. Accredited high schools were, as a rule, located at more or less remote points and the country boy and girl usually were denied the privileges of a formal preparatory training. The sacrificing parents of Dean Coffey, however, recognized the value of advanced education. The father having been a successful school teacher in his younger days, encouraged his children to enter the same profession. Dean Coffey prepared himself for rural teaching by attending small denominational colleges at Hartsville and Franklin, Indiana. His first assignment in teaching came before he reached his seventeenth year in age and it was in his native county. For a number of succeeding years his time was divided among many activities. Chief among these were attending college at Hartsville, Franklin and Indiana Universityg general farming, raising and exhibiting of pure bred Shropshire sheep and teaching rural schools during the winter months. His was a busy life, but with it all he found time to spend several months at the Shropshire sheep establishment belonging to G. Howard Davidson of Milbrook, New York, where he served as an apprentice under the tutor- ship of that skilled shepherd, Thomas Bradburn. From that time on, Dean Coffey became absorbed with an ambition to follow purebred sheep farming. Associated with his father he helped in the production and exhibition of many fine specimens of the Shropshire breed. Later Professor Herbert W. Mumford of Illinois University became interested in the enthusiasm and success of this young sheep man and invited him to become flock master for the sheep belonging to the Agricultural College of the University of Illinois. This contact eventually led to a college degree, a college teaching career and finally to the deanship of the Minnesota Agricultural College. -J. S. COFFEY, Professor of Animal Hzrsbrzrzdry, Ohio State U1zitfersizfy. Page Se'z'r'nIz'z'rz

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A Tribute to Dean Coffey I think the only piece of advice my father gave me during my educational career was when, with slate and primer under my arm, I started, under convoy of two neighbor girls, for my first day' in school. Guy, he said, don't be a tattle tale in school. I hope in recalling my first memory of Dean Coffey, I am not violating that injunction. For his name first came under my notice at school, in the Graduate School of the University of Illi- nois. One day at a meeting of the executive committee of the Graduate School, the dean, who was strong for regularity, brought up the DEAN Comm puzzling case of a graduate student who pro- Twffffa'-Offf YMVS Of Asf posed animal husbandry as a major and eco- nomics as a minor. Could he, himself a pro- fessor of economics, approve such an uncon- ventional combination? I learned, further, that this student, a member of the staff in the College of Agriculture, was a specialist in sheep husbandry and argued that a knowledge of markets, tariffs, and other economic matters was as germane to his major interests as anything in biology. The student woniand I was for him from that day to this. It seemed to me then, as it has since, that he saw a little further than most of his associates. The student's name was W. C. Coffey. Perhaps another incident convinced me he was far-seeing. I had just married and wanted to build a home on a shoestring. I had the shoestring but the lot I coveted was owned by this same W. C. Coffey-in ahead again. He was willing to sell, how- ever, and sheep husbandry sheared only a lamblike profit from history. When I came to Minnesota, I followed my old neighbor's rise to influence in his own faculty and no one was more gratified than the writer when, in 1921, it was possible for President Coffman, who had also been his neighbor in Urbana, to win Professor Coffey of the University of Illinois as Dean of the Department of Agriculture at Minnesota. Anyone who would pay tribute, as you are doing in this volume, to Dean Coifey's wise leadership and educational statesmanship, must remember that no corresponding deanship of agriculture in any other university is so complex and exacting in its de- mands as the headship of the Department of Agriculture at the University of Minne- sota. It combines many and diverse functions. It is a college in which agriculture, forestry, and home economics are combined. To this it adds the responsibilities of the experiment station and of four sub-collegiate schools of agriculture. It is truly a tripartite department, carrying on education on all levels. Its constituency is the Page Eighteen