If you missed my program for the Indian Valley Public Library last week and would like to see it, you can tune in to the 56-minute recording here. I talk about the ways in which the seagoing cowboys and the Heifer Project contributed to building peace after World War II. Enjoy!
~Peggy
When the Heifer Project made their first shipment of cattle to Czechoslovakia in January 1946, recipients were encouraged to send photos and letters to the Heifer Project office to be shared with the donors of their animals so international correspondence could develop. Here are some translated excerpts:
“I am a widow. My house and barn burned down during the war and the cow in the barn as well. Some weeks ago I was advised by our local National committee to go to Moravaska Ostrava, where a cow shipped from USA is ready for me; I could not believe it, but it was true and when I brought her home we all wept being deeply touched by the generosity of yours. The children take care of the cow every day on the pasture.” Anna Hravcikova, Zabreh
Anna Hravcikova and her children cherish their Heifer Project cow, 1946. Photo courtesy of the George Craig family.
“The war razed our buildings, killed livestock and nothing was left except our ravaged home…. When the cow arrived there was much happiness. Five eager children jumped about me and the cow. When I brought the first milk they stood around with their little pots each one eager to taste the milk from America….” Anna Dostalova, Stepankovice
“I thank you most sincerely in the name of my family of 7 for the gift of a cow. It came to us at the right time and helped us when we were most needy….An old slogan of ours has been proven— ‘When need is greatest, the help of God is nearest!’ ” Joseph Yolat, Zarubek
“With feelings of deepest gratitude we received from you a priceless gift—a cow for our Evangelical orphanage in Trinec near Tesinsko. Toward the end of the war our orphanage invaded by the German armada was completely damaged….Out of sacrifices of members of our Evangelical Committee we began slowly to rebuild the orphanage….We had a big holiday when we brought the cow home. No one could believe that it was given to us free…..” Parish Priest, Trinec
The grateful Frank Vojkuvka family with their donated cow, 1946. “Your gift was for us a great surprise,” they said. Photo courtesy of the George Craig family.
“I am beginning alone because until now my husband has not been reported. I am alone with two children—a 5 year old and a three year old boy, also an elderly mother….Our entire farm was demolished….[Our cow] means for me the greatest means of livelihood. It has become a member of our family. I thank you dear friends most heartily for this precious gift and believe me that we will think of you the rest of our lives and be grateful.” Elizabeth Moravcova, Bolatice
“We and the children are looking forward with joy to pasturing the cow; and we shall sing in doing it—after which it will give us more milk.” Josef Hornik, Kozmice
“We had been expelled by the Germans from our birthplace and during the time of occupation we were with our five children in a small camp where we had to live on ration cards. Milk never was sufficient. The children suffered terribly. After the liberation of our country, we returned and found a completely devastated homestead….By your beautiful gift you helped us a lot….I send you my heartiest thanks.” Family Rajnochova, Skorotin
The Frantisek Martinik family in front of their ruined home, 1946. Photo courtesy of the George Craig family.
“The friendly and sacrificial attitude of the selfless Americans in help to the Silesian people is proving that there are still good people in the World despite of the hatred in Warfare and that Love didn’t die and never will in human hearts.” Frantisek Martinik, Vresine
May we continue to prove through our actions that there are still good people in the world.
While UNRRA’s first livestock shipment to Czechoslovakia was on its way in December 1945, a second shipment was in the works. The Brethren Service Committee’s Heifer Project had been in contact with the Czechoslovakian Embassy in Washington, DC, offering a gift of heifers to this war-torn country for the neediest of recipients.
On December 5, BSC’s Director of Material Aid John Metzler, Sr. notified the Heifer Project Committee:
Contacts with the Czechoslovak Embassy show a great deal of interest in cattle there. Cables were sent yesterday getting governmental clearance from Czechoslovakia on the matter of distribution. UNRRA has agreed to transport these cattle . . . provided we can complete proper negotiations with that government.
Wheels turned quickly, with the Committee voting approval of the shipment on December 18 if word of acceptance came from Czechoslovakia.
On December 22, UNRRA issued a press statement to be released on December 24, 1945:
One hundred and seventy-five head of cattle have been offered to UNRRA by the Church of the Brethren for the people of Czechoslovakia. The animals, now at the Roger Roop farm at Union Bridge, Maryland, are bred heifers whose average age is two years. . . . After being shipped by UNRRA from Baltimore to an allied controlled port in Germany, the livestock will be transported by rail to their new homes in Czechoslovakia.
When notified of the contribution, Dr. Vaclav Myslivec, representative of the Czechoslovakian Ministry of Agriculture in the United States, said, “The people of my country are badly in need of milk for their children. In expressing their appreciation for this gift I cannot but recall that there were cattle in the stable on the night when the baby Jesus was born. The spirit of that first Christmas lives on in the hearts of the American people who so generously gave these fine animals to rehabilitate the war-devastated dairy herds of Czechoslovakia.”
On the 12th Day of Christmas in January 1946, 170 heifers — donated by Brethren, Evangelical and Reformed congregations, Mennonites, and other churches from as far away as Idaho and Kansas — began their voyage to Czechoslovakia on the S. S. Charles W. Wooster.
Two of the Czechoslovakian children whose family benefited from the gift of a heifer, 1946. Photo sent with thank you letter, courtesy of Heifer International.
May the spirit of that first Christmas and that of 75 years ago live on.
Wishing all my readers a Blessed Holiday Season and New Year to come.
And God bless the seagoing cowboys who delivered hope to a war-torn world.
~Peggy
Have you ever been “given” a cow, or a goat, or a flock of chicks for Christmas, in name only, with the money going to Heifer International for them to provide that animal, along with training, to help lift a family out of poverty? Or have you ever received Heifer’s “Most Important Gift Catalog in the World®” at holiday time from which you can select such a gift for someone?
This catalog has been published for many years now. I’m currently working on a book about the first decade of the Heifer Project, and I’ve just come across a story which shows this idea was alive already in 1946, four years after Heifer was founded in 1942.
Here’s the story in the words of Thurl Metzger, then serving as volunteer administrative assistant in the Heifer Project office at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Maryland, through Civilian Public Service:
It began several weeks ago at a farewell party given for Wayne and Wilma Buckle. They are a couple who gave a year of service at the Center here and helped to start this plant in operation. They requested no gifts; instead, an offering was taken in honor of their service for a donation to the Heifer Project. This amounted to some thirty-odd dollars and at a later meeting the group decided to complete the amount necessary to purchase a heifer — the “Wilma Buckle Memorial Heifer”. A scheme was worked out for inter-department competition. Any department could use whatever means they chose, consistent with the ten commandments, but each was to keep the amount collected a secret. The climax of a final party was the heifer auctioning. A barefooted lassie from deep in the hills of Virginia led in the heifer whose udder looked surprisingly like a base-ball glove and whose four legs had shoes on. Each department was authorized to bid the amount which it had raised. The bidding was lively; the excitement was high and the cow performed well. When the bidding was over and the addition completed, a total of $512.30 had been contributed [enough for two heifers]. The money was given by the employees of the Service Center, many of whom are volunteer workers. There are now about 125 people here.
Still trying to think of an appropriate gift for that hard-to-buy person on your list? Heifer’s catalog is now also online. Choose your animal here.
Happy Holidays!
I recently had the delightful experience of being interviewed by “Sammy the Toucan” for the Indiana Center for the Book about my picture book THE SEAGOING COWBOY and my work on Heifer International history. The short interview premiered last week on the Indiana State Library’s “Toucan Tuesday” on their Facebook page and is now on YouTube. Watch it here if you dare!
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War, scars of which still remain today. In memory of that time, a major Korean media outlet has posted a series of three articles by reporter Hong Duk-hwa and a YouTube video this week about how Heifer Project, Inc., today’s Heifer International, stepped into the fray.
Korean Heifer supporter Haewon Lee tells me, “All three articles highlight how HPI and Heifer’s Seagoing Cowboys, undiscovered ‘heroes’ of the Korean War, helped to reconstruct the war-stricken Korean livestock industry and farmers.”
Google’s rough translation of the titles are: 1) “Operation ‘Noah’s Ark’ reviving the ruins of the Korean livestock industry,” 2) “The story of a cowboy driving a herd of cows across the Pacific Ocean,” 3) “When the gift of livestock is hopeful to us who have been dead…now it’s time to give.” If you’d like to take a look at the original articles with photos, the links are posted below. (You can ask Google to translate if you don’t read Korean. The translation is rough, but you can get the gist.)
HPI began its shipments to Korea in the midst of the war with approximately 210,000 hatching eggs sent by air in April 1952. Airlifts of goats and hogs followed in June with more in 1953 before the war’s end. Shipments by sea, including cattle, began in 1954, with the last shipments by air in 1976.
L. to R. Thurl Metzger, Bill Reiche of the United Nations, and United Nations Ambassador at Large from South Korea Ben C. Limb at Midway Airport in Chicago, sending the hatching eggs on their way April 1, 1952. Photo courtesy of Heifer International.
Thurl Metzger, Executive Secretary of HPI when these shipments began, traveled to Korea in the autumn of 1951 to survey the needs there. After the successful shipments of hatching eggs, he said in a news release: “My recent tour of Korea convinces me that the longer the conflict continues, the greater the need. Therefore, we must not relax our efforts because [truce] negotiations seem to be at a standstill.”
“The war has brought about wholesale destruction of livestock,” he said in background material sent with the release. “Shortage of work cattle has made it impossible to cultivate many of the rice paddies and fields. The rural economy has also suffered near bankruptcy due to the fact that farmers have been deprived of their chickens and hogs which heretofore had provided significant income.” He underscored the fact that “Lack of proper animal protein in the Korean diet has also become a serious threat to public health.”
A letter of gratitude sent to Metzger in July 1968 from the Union Christian Service Center in Taejon, Korea, quantifies the value of Heifer’s gifts to Korea. “The total value of this stock and supplies, according to prices in Korea today, we estimate to nearly reach half million dollars.” This does not “consider the value of the offspring from all the livestock imported. Therefore,” the four signees concluded, “within several years, we would estimate the total help to Korea originating from your contribution as high as a million dollars.”
And today, as seen in the third of the Korean articles this week, Koreans are bringing their gifts from Heifer full circle. The article tells the story of Heifer recipient Jae-bok Lee, now a successful dairy farmer at age 83. In 1988, Mr. Lee and eight fellow dairy farmers traveled to Heifer International headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas, to share their experience. “After returning home,” the article says, “Mr. Lee collected $7,300 to buy 8 cows and donated them to farmhouses in Sichuan, China in 1989.”
Today Mr. Lee says, “I don’t know how long I will work (healthy), but I want to play a role in delivering the gift of hope to the developing countries (like us at that time).”
Heifer International’s core value of “Passing on the Gift” has come full circle in Korea, a demonstration of how giving to Heifer International is exponential.
Watch for stories here in July of seagoing cowboys to Korea.
P.S. I’m adding a link to a Yonhap News TV report with remarkable historical video footage: Not a Cup, But a Cow: Seagoing Cowboys crossed the sea to Korea
May 14, 1945, is a special day in Heifer International history. It marks a dream finally realized.
The Heifer Project, Dan West’s dream of sending cows to Europe to help starving war victims, came to life in April 1942. The Church of the Brethren Northern Indiana District Men’s Work organization adopted West’s idea and named a committee to get it going. The idea caught on, and by January 1943 it became a national program of the Brethren Service Committee. However – and this is a BIG however – with World War II raging, shipping live cargo across the Atlantic was simply out of the question. And not for the lack of trying on the part of the Heifer Project Committee to get heifers to Belgium and Spain. In 1944, with plenty of heifers ready to go, the committee sent a small pilot shipment instead to Puerto Rico.
Concurrently, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was in the planning stages of how they would operate when hostilities ceased. Despite West’s attempts to get UNRRA to agree to ship Heifer Project animals, UNRRA did not intend to ship live cargo. But when the Near East Foundation requested bulls for Greece to help the country’s devastated dairy industry rebuild, UNRRA approached the Heifer Project for assistance with a pilot project of their own. Brethren Pennsylvania diary farmer and Guernsey breeder Benjamin Bushong was drafted to obtain the bulls for the Heifer Project and see them to the ship. May 14, 1945, just six days after V-E day in Europe, six purebred bulls sailed for Greece. Bushong became Executive Secretary of the Heifer Project later that year and often joked that the first “heifers” to Europe were “six bulls.”
Brown Swiss bulls donated by the Heifer Project after arrival in Greece, May 1945. Credit: UNRRA photo.
Read the story of that first European livestock shipment for both UNRRA and the Heifer Project in two parts here and here.
Congratulations Heifer International on another live-saving milestone!
Seventy-five years ago, sixteen impoverished Puerto Rican families received the first gift of heifers donated by American farmers through the Heifer Project. This past Saturday, two historical developments of 1942 that led to these gifts were celebrated in the lush mountain town of Castañer, Puerto Rico.
October 5, 2019. A tour of the modern Castañer Hospital and its new emergency room wing started the day’s festivities. Photo courtesy of the planning committee.
In July 1942, the Church of the Brethren Service Committee opened Civilian Public Service Camp #43 in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, as part of the alternative service program established through the U.S. government for conscientious objectors during World War II. The first sub-unit of CPS Camp #43 was set up in Castañer to serve this thickly populated mountainous area in dire need of medical services. The CPS men assigned there built a small hospital out of a barrack structure and provided other social services.
The remains of the original Hospital Castañer.
After the war, the Brethren Service Committee continued the work there, including the formation of a Church of the Brethren congregation (Iglesia de los Hermanos). The hospital and congregation have both survived and thrived, exemplifying the meaning of community in its deepest sense.
1942 also marks the beginning of the Heifer Project, when Dan West’s idea of sending cows to people devastated by the Spanish Civil War was put into motion as a program of the Brethren Service Committee. With many heifers ready to ship by the end of 1943, shipping across the Atlantic was impossible with World War II underway. Already at work in Puerto Rico, the BSC chose this poverty-stricken island as the alternate destination for the first Heifer Project shipment.
CPS Camp #43 Director Rufus King worked closely with the Farm Security Administration in Puerto Rico to make arrangements. Sixteen heifers arrived in San Juan via ship July 22, 1944. They were distributed by the FSA in municipalities near San Juan to needy recipients who could support a cow. The cows offered many children in these families their first taste of milk.
The next year, on May 25, 1945, a larger shipment of 50 heifers arrived in San Juan. From this shipment, six heifers and one bull were allotted to the CPS Camp #43 sub-unit in Castañer. The heifers provided milk for the hospital and CPS workers and served as a demonstration dairy project for the resettled small farmers in the area. The bull served to improve the dairy stock of the surrounding communities.
A portion of Medford Neher’s mural depicting the history of Hospital Castañer highlights the Heifer Project shipment to Castañer of 1945.
At Saturday’s Heifer International celebration event, a roadside marker was placed near the old hospital to commemorate the site where the barn for this small dairy herd had been located.
Heifer International Vice President Jesús Pizarro; Lares, Puerto Rico, Mayor Hon. Roberto Pagán; and Church of the Brethren General Secretary David Steele unveil the marker commemorating Heifer International’s work in Puerto Rico.
In an afternoon celebration in the town square, two special gifts brought the 1942 developments of CPS Unit #43 and the Heifer Project full circle. General Secretary David Steele presented a check from the Church of the Brethren for $100,000 for the Castañer Hospital to the hospital’s Executive Director Domingo Monroig.
And in honor of Heifer International’s practice of “passing on the gift,” Steele and Heifer International Vice President Jesús Pizarro presented a bull calf to local high school agriculture student Erick Yadiel Rivera to give him a hand up in his aspirations of developing a dairy herd.
The celebration ended roundly for me on Sunday morning when I had the opportunity to meet a Heifer Project recipient at the Castañer church.
Yours truly with heifer recipient María Quiles Pérez and Jay Wittmeyer, Executive Director of Global Mission and Service for the Church of the Brethren and Board Member of Heifer International.
María Quiles Pérez was a young girl at the time her father, Benito Gonzalez Rivera, was granted a heifer. They lived in the Guyao sector of Adjuntas near Castañer. Gonzalez Rivera would have been one of the small farmers selected either by the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration or the Farm Security Administration to receive an animal. María recalls that they paid $3.00 a month for their heifer. This payment would have been through a loan from the FSA or PRRA to cover transportation costs and other expenses for the animal. For the first shipment, and likely the second, the total came to about $75.00 per heifer.
“Raising a family was hard at that time,” María says. “Our heifer was a gift from God.”
Monday, July 14, will mark 75 years since Heifer International’s first shipment, which went to Puerto Rico. Their mission: Ending hunger and poverty while caring for the earth. Here’s how the organization looked at age 20:
An unidentified 1964 article. Courtesy of Brethren Historical Library and Archives.
At age 75, with headquarters now in Little Rock, Arkansas, the basic objectives of the Heifer Project and its “passing on the gift” model remain; but the organization has matured to the point where today entire communities are transformed through Heifer’s assistance and guidance. Animals are no longer shipped from the United States; they are purchased in the region of assistance where they are acclimated to local conditions and resistant to local diseases.
To date, Heifer has helped more than 34 million families break the cycle of poverty. Their current fact sheet summarizes their work this way:
Heifer International is a global nonprofit dedicated to helping farming communities around the world lift themselves to self-reliance. We work with small-scale farmers worldwide to achieve living incomes, ensuring that they have adequate food, housing and other essential resources to lead decent and dignified lives. We assess needs at the community level and address these through inputs like animals and training that are compatible with market needs. Doing so enables small-scale farmers and farming communities to build successful businesses, thriving networks and resilient livelihoods. To strengthen our impact, we have aligned our goals with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, particularly zero hunger, zero poverty and gender equality.
One could wish Heifer International another 75 years of wonderful work, but it may be more fitting to say, “May you one day work yourselves out of a job through the achievement of your mission.” Happy Anniversary, Heifer International!
As Americans celebrated our Independence Day circa 1960, a German newspaper reported that a resettled displaced German from World War II celebrated along with us. The translation of this inspiring story from the Heifer International archives follows (inserted photos were not a part of the article):
Thanks on the day of Independence for help in hard times
Langenhagen (a rural district of Hanover). Every year on July 4th one inhabitant of Langenhagen hoists the American flag in front on his one-family house. Already early in the morning, when the news vendors and the boys that bring the buns come, it flutters proudly at the high flagpole. Those who do not know the reason wonder and ask what that means, but the neighbors in the housing-estates street and many refugee farmers all over Lower Saxony know the reason. This flag is a symbol of thanks which one man here privately says to the American people. Thanks for 828 prolific heifers, given by USA farmers to refugee farmers in Lower Saxony in the postwar years, in order to help them to overcome their great losses.
Courtesy of Heifer International.
On July 4th, 1776, the declaration of independence of the USA was signed. Since then this day has been widely celebrated in the USA. Everybody who is in possession of a flag, hoists the flag; and thus Hans Moehrl, director of the Agrarian Department of the Confederation of Displaced Persons for the state of Lower Saxony also hoists the flag in his house at Langenhagen. “I just feel I must thank the American people for their help, and I thought I might express this thanks by celebrating with them their national holiday.”
He speaks with great emotion of the cattle gifts. Totally 3500 heifers (cows that calve for the first time) were brought into the Federal Republic of Germany. The churches of all confessions in the USA did this action jointly, and the children collected the money for the transport in the children’s services. The animals that were appointed for Lower Saxony were put up in the cattle-auction hall at Lehrte and during a festive hour they were given to the refugee farmers. Often a pastor accompanied the transport as cowboy, often the givers themselves came along and accompanied the animal as far as the new cow barn. The refugee farmers had to assume the obligation to give the first female calf to another refugee farmer, and thus a great deal of boon followed this action.
This newspaper clipping says: East Prussian farmer Hermann Kruger and his wife can, with special joy, thank their new friend, American pastor Edwin F. Riske (middle), for his gift of a heifer. Courtesy of Heifer International.
Mostly light-red Jersey heifers were concerned which are smaller than our black Ostfriesen. They also give less milk, but they distinguish themselves by a considerably higher fat content, often up to 8 percent. These cows are without horns, immediately after the birth the onsets are touched with potassium hydroxide, so they do not grow. Thus the animals become more peaceable. This is now also often done with German heifers.
Courtesy of Heifer International.
The USA farmers did not only help Germany. Since the Spanish Civil War, since 1938, they sent totally 10,112 items of cattle, 1520 pigs, 47 horses, 7744 goats, 1241 sheep, 358,162 hens, 310,657 eggs for incubation as well as many bee colonies, turkeys and rabbits, and other useful animals into 29 different countries. Every family that got an animal had to assume the obligation to give the firstborn to another person in need. Meanwhile this action has come to an end for Germany; but it continues undiminished for other countries that are in need.
The Seagoing Cowboys 