Herbert W. Clutter, Bonnie Clutter, Nancy & Kenyon Clutter

(Printed in the November 1959 Co-op "Partners" Newsletter)

This issue of Partners is dedicated to the passing of these members of one of agriculture's first families.  Their heinous assassins brutally attacked them in their home west of Holcomb, Kansas, Saturday night, November 14^th, 1959 and mercilessly snuffed their lives with successive shotgun blasts.

Herb was born at Ingalls, Kansas on May 24, 1911.  His parents moved with him from the area when Herb was 2 years old.  He graduated from Kansas State University in 1933.  He began his life long service to agriculture as Assistant County Agricultural Agent in Montgomery County, coming to Finney County as County Agricultural Agent in 1934.   He remained as County Agricultural Agent until 1939 when he engaged in an extensive livestock and farming operation which he continued to his death.

President Eisenhower appointed him a member of the Federal Farm Credit Board in 1953.  He declined re-nomination in 1957.  Herb was a strong force in the formation of the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers and became its first president.  He was also president of the National Association of Wheat Growers.  He worked for and was instrumental in legislation which created the Kansas Wheat Commission.

Herb was a foremost supporter of all community institutions, including 4-H, The Methodist Church, civic clubs and farm organizations.  He was statewide chairman of the Conference of Farm Organizations and Cooperatives.  He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Garden City Cooperative Equity Exchange for 12 years and was its President at the time of his death.  He was also a member of the Board of Directors of Consumers Cooperative Association, a regional wholesale, in Kansas City, Missouri, having succeeded to that position upon the resignation of the late Robert Ackley.

While we can enumerate the many responsible positions Herb has held in his service to his fellow man, we cannot tabulate or measure the contributions he has made to humanity.  His work was unfinished and his death was untimely.

Our nation's agriculture has lost one of its chief exponents.  Mankind is poorer for his passing.  We, who survive, live in a better world because Herb put his shoulder to the task.  He has shown us the way.  It is for us to take the causes he has so nobly advanced and carry them to their culmination.  Herb would have wanted it that way.

Back