A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS continued A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS con't from FRONT PAGE However upon meeting Dr. Michael Rowland, I will neither forget him nor his words shared upon our first meeting, “I had to become a surgeon in order to become a farmer.” From that moment on, I just knew I had to tell his story. Today, my visit to his home is planned. The Great Danes announce my visit; we meet as friends this time. Dr. Rowland has a pot of coffee going as we settle around the dining room table scattered with papers, clippings, and an opened laptop. Rowland has projects going all over the place; he speaks at the agriculture center tomorrow, the college the next. With connections growing all over the county and beyond, his calendar remains full as he is a local resource, a master gardener, and an advisor on many boards. Not many of us realize our purpose early on, but from his earliest recollections, all Rowland ever wanted to be was a farmer. Gardening grew within his soul when he planted his first garden at age 8, gathered eggs from his hens, and sold vegetables all over his town of Bath, NY. Rowland grew up with his twin sisters born a year and a week behind him.” As Rowland’s life experiences grew so grew his gardens. Rowland tells, “I’ve had a big garden pretty much all my life.” As a little kid he remembers being out in the garden with his grandparents who lived about an hour away, one set lived in Leroy, NY, the other in a little town called Whitesville. His dad’s parents were more into flowers with a big rose garden. His mom’s parents were vegetable gardeners who shared a big garden in the middle of their block with about 10 or 12 houses surrounding. Each evening found everyone out in their gardens hoeing, weeding, pruning, picking, and always hoping to have the prettiest garden, the earliest tomatoes, the tallest corn, the fewest weeds.” Grandpa Rowland had a compost pile as big as a dump truck. All the scraps from the kitchen and the yard were put on one end of the pile while the other end offered years of composted goodness. Rowland explains, “Grandpa did not turn the pile, he merely threw scraps on one end and dug it out the other to use on grandma’s flower gardens. She had a beautiful rose garden with a long driveway going out to the highway with perennials on one side and annuals on the other. People would come from all over to see her flowers.” School came easy; Rowland agrees, “Oh, yeah, I loved school! I was top of my class and always liked math.” When his peers were applying to multiple schools, Rowland applied to Cornell, the only place he ever wanted to go! At the end of his junior year due to good grades and plenty of farm experience, he was accepted into their school of agriculture to study Agriculture Economics. Upon taking courses in economics, Rowland began to understand the enormous expense of owning a farm, buying equipment, buildings, animals, and realized— “It was never going to happen!” During Christmas vacation that year, “I woke up one morning after a dream,” begins Rowland. “God told me that if I became a general surgeon, then I’d be able to have the farm I always wanted. At this point, I was distraught because I could never see owning a farm. I was poor; my family didn’t not have any money—it was like trying to swim up Niagara falls.” Rowland began taking high level courses for biology, chemistry, physics and competing with people who were going into higher degrees. Since Cornell offers a public and private college, Rowland took the required 20% in the public college and the other 80% in the private. He concludes, “I ended up being a smarter person because I learned to compete with smarter people. However, I was in a big hurry to start medical school during my junior year, so I took 18-19 credit hours a semester and worked 30 hours a week to cover expenses.” While the Vietnam War riots were raging on campus, Rowland got on the waiting list of several medical schools. Rowland explains, “I was getting B’s in all of the high level courses while my competition was getting A’s in easier courses, so that put me at a disadvantage with all of the competition trying to avoid Vietnam. As the riots worsened, the rioters took over the administrative building on campus messing up the transcript records. I was so busy with school, work, and family, that I didn’t realize the delay during the summer of ‘69 commemorating Woodstock. That same summer I was drafted, A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS con't. next column A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS con't. p. 26 “The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” ~ E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web p.10 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. No. 127
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