This was done. At the second meeting, the Association could count sixty members. Professor John Craig, of Cornell, in noting this growth, said, "Dr. Deming has not merely performed the routine duties of the secretary, but he has studied the case and has presented a good many facts not apparent on the surface. It seems to me that this augurs well."
The augury proved prophetic. The Association continued to grow. But without this first intelligent, persistent effort upon the part of. Dr. Deming, it could hardly have survived.
This small bit of history is illustrative of the whole life of Dr. Deming. His deep interest in the purposes and hopes of our Association has never ceased. Upon his own ground he planted, and budded and grafted many nut trees, and has given away the fruits of his labors with a prodigal good will. Deming's Burnham pecan and the Deming Purple black walnut are the only introductions, so far as this writer knows, which bear his name.
Again, some thirty years after the first meeting mentioned above, Dr. Deming thought up and carried through another project which makes the Association repeatedly his debtor, an Index of the first thirty volumes of the Association's Annual Reports. It is a work which saves the conscientious worker in northern nut culture hours and hours of labor.
And now our Dean, the last of the founding fathers, has left us for the Elysian Fields. His gentle, kindly face will be sadly missed by those who knew him, but he lives on in every tree whose planting his labors inspired and in every mind which has been, even unconsciously, his heir.
A letter from Miss Charlotte Deming, a sister, assures us, somewhat touchingly, but happily, of this fact:
"My brother's heart was with and in the work of the Association. He was happy to know of its expansion into such a wide-spread organization, and very proud of having been made its Dean."
Dr. Deming lived a full life. He was a physician of distinction, a graduate of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and was retired from the army after World War I with the rank of Major. After graduation from Columbia, he served his internship in a New York hospital, then on the medical staff of the State Immigrant Hospital, Ward's Island. He began private practice in Westchester County, New York and, later, for many years, served as examining physician with the Veterans' Administration in Hartford, Connecticut.
It is interesting to know, as told by his son, Hawthorne, that Mrs. Deming, formerly Imogene Hawthorne, was the youngest granddaughter of the immortal Nathaniel. It is evident that Dr. Deming, both in private life and in his public interests, was a strong believer in the value of good blood-lines.
John Davidson