When I was a boy two other young men, somewhat older than I, were young men in the same township and somewhat closely located. I knew those boys and I knew them well. You came to know them and know them well. One of those boys was the late Thomas P. Littlepage, a charter member of this Association. It was my good pleasure to teach school with him. We attended College together. At college we roomed together. We attended conventions together and were close personal friends. I think I was in position to know him and know him well. The other boy was R. L. McCoy. We too, were close personal friends. We too, taught school in the same territory and contemporary with T. P. Littlepage. Prior to any organization of the N.N.G.A. I went with these two boys (men by that time) on trips of investigation and inspection of certain nut trees about which they had heard and which they wanted to examine.
If the trees examined met the proper standards, they wanted to use them in propagation. If not they would pass them up.
Another boy somewhat younger than myself and the two above mentioned boys, joined most heartily into the nut discussions and investigations and explorations of promising clues. With them he helped to run down clues when they would hear of a promising prospect. The jungles were never too dense, the distance too far, the road too muddy or rough, for those three characters to run down in those horse and buggy days, any prospect in which they were interested. This boy also became a member of your most valued organization. I have a special interest in this boy. I was, especially closely associated with him and his family. He went to school to me. My signature appears on his Common School Diploma. Their home was my home whenever I sought to make it so. I was free to come and go. I came a lot. Ford Wilkinson, the third character, and I have been close friends ever since.
Another one of your fine members became a good friend of mine. He came into our county and planted a farm to nut trees and nut production. It is now the largest nut orchard in the county. I am informed that at that time it was the largest nut farm of hardy northern varieties in the world. I got acquainted with him early and became endeared to him. It was none other than the late Harry Weber.
When it became known that you were to meet here in 1935, it was a natural sequence that Ford Wilkinson, knowing that I would gladly help in any way I could and knowing I was his genuine friend saw fit to place me on the Citizen's Committee. If he had not, I positively would have climbed aboard anyway. You couldn't have driven me out with a peeled hickory club. I was just going to be in on it whether or no.
Whether I performed well in 1935 or whether he couldn't find any one else to serve in my place, I never knew; but he again placed me on the Committee in 1939.
Now here I am in 1952 an old broken down fossil, broken in health, but not in spirit, of little consequence to anybody or anything, I am still on the Committee.
That answers the question of some of you of why that old man Bennett is always on the local committee and that you have wondered if there is no other person in this whole community that will serve but him. No, friends, we have many who would gladly serve and I doubt not that would serve much more efficiently.
I have prepared a short "skit" that I wish to present.
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