David Van Doren Jr.

David Miller Van Doren Jr. passed away on May 17, 2017, in Akron, OH. after 84 years of a joyous life filled with family, friends, community, plenty of sweet corn, and his ever-ready dry sense of humor – an especially valuable inheritance that his children enjoy to this day.

Dave was the husband of Janet Bradford Van Doren, whom he married in the middle of an unexpected snowstorm on March 26, 1955 in Champaign, IL. When he and Jan celebrated their 50th anniversary at a surprise event in Ohio in March 2005, they repeated the snowy experience, this time with numerous friends and family actually in attendance, thanks to advanced technology and improved transportation.

David was born on Aug. 16, 1932 in Urbana, IL, the oldest child of David Miller Van Doren Sr. and Ruth Walters Van Doren. His sister Karen was born five years later, an event which, as he was fond of noting, ruined his life forever. 

After an illustrious school career in Elmhurst, IL, where, among other things, he played varsity high school basketball badly and only because of popular demand due to his 6’5” height, he took himself off to the University of Illinois, where he met Jan. Though he came from a fairly affluent family, he was so successful at playing the role of a humble, starving student throughout their courtship that Jan’s mother felt compelled to warn her not to let him spend too much money on her, lest he strain his suffering family’s perilous finances.

After graduating from Illinois in 1954, Dave (or Davey, as his tiny mother referred to her towering son throughout his life, to distinguish him from his father) moved to East Lansing, MI to attend graduate school at Michigan State University. He and Jan welcomed their oldest child, Mary, (a remarkable infant) in East Lansing in 1957. 

Dave earned his doctorate in soil science in 1958, a discipline which, as he explained later to his children, he chose in order to maintain his family’s farming legacy without actually having to do any farming. The Van Doren family then moved to Wooster, OH, where he took up research at Ohio State University’s Agricultural Experiment Station (now the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center), and launched the career that was to eventually turn a 1930s farming oddity into a completely mainstream agricultural practice today.

Joining his Michigan classmate, Glover Triplett, Dave began in-depth research into no-till farming, in which the remains of the previous year’s corn crop was left to molder in the field, instead of being plowed under. Although it had been tried experimentally as a means of preventing soil erosion during the Dust Bowl era, it took the two young researchers with their scientific method and determination to ignore the naysayers, plus advanced seed-sowing equipment and the advent of new, effective herbicides to combat weeds, to make no-till farming a respectable and widely-accepted method of growing crops – today encompassing over 100 million acres in the U.S. and millions more around the world.

Thanks to Dave’s tireless research – which included an endless supply of superfluous sweet corn brought home every summer for his suffering children to shuck – the perfect ratio of old crop mulch to soil was discovered, which led to lower labor and energy costs, a reduction in soil erosion, enhancement of soil quality and, ultimately, greater crop yields.

Today, the fields where Dave conducted his long-term research are considered the longest continuously maintained no-till plots in the world. They have been protected against future plowing by their endowment in 2003, and have been officially named the Triplett-Van Doren No-Tillage Experimental Plots.

Dave’s family grew during this time to include Clayton, Vance and Lisa, all born in Wooster. His devotion to his family led him into many new worlds outside of his work, such as serving as co-president with Jan of the Layton Elementary School PTA; participation in Wooster’s fair housing program; serving as district commissioner for Boy Scouts for six years; and serving as an elder of Wooster’s First Presbyterian Church and Clerk of Session from 1980 to 1989.

But the activity that consumed most of his free time was spawned when Mary was a child; leaping out of the family car as it parked in front of a relative’s pond, she raced into the water, forcing Dave to wade in, fully dressed, to rescue her. Swimming lessons at the YMCA followed, and after Mary started swimming competitively, and her siblings eventually joined her, Dave became one of the founding swim parents of Wooster’s hugely popular youth competitive swimming program.

Dave got to wield a starter’s pistol in the early years as a swim official, and later he and Jan were co-presidents of Wooster Swim Club. Dave was also Clerk of Course for the famous Freedlander AAU Swim Meet (which is still run today) for 12 years. Nothing in his childhood could possibly have prepared him for these highly entertaining endeavors. 

Of course, there was also his undying love for playing poker, as his parents had engaged in that pastime — sometimes just with chips, sometimes for spare change — since his childhood. Long before it became popular TV show fodder, Dave played the game whenever possible with the children and grandchildren he had taught. 

And in his copious spare time when he wasn’t engaged in volunteering or poker, Dave was also a dedicated musician, playing clarinet, oboe and contrabass clarinet in various community bands for decades. He and Jan inspired all their children and grandchildren to play various instruments over the years.

Dave was an inspired traveler, if one considers sleeping in campers and tents inspiring, who took his young family across the country every summer for long trips to visit national parks and other natural wonders, where he enjoyed hiking and camping out. Dave meticulously recorded each trip on a huge U.S. map that hung over his desk for decades.

He and Jan also travelled extensively in the U.S. and foreign parts for many years after the children had left the nest.

After decades of being up to his eyeballs in dirt, Dave retired from the OARDC in 1985, and later moved to an 81-acre parcel of land in Lodi, OH in 1987. There he engaged in agronomy experiments of various kinds for entertainment, though, as his family was fond of pointing out, he had never successfully raised sweet corn on his personal property, always losing his crop to raccoons and deer no matter how hard he tried to protect it.

Also during his retirement, he and Jan researched the entire genealogy of both of their families, along with those of his various children-in-law.

Dave was a dedicated musician, playing clarinet, oboe and contrabass clarinet in various community bands for decades. He and Jan inspired all their children and grandchildren to play various instruments over the years.

His early instrument was the clarinet which he had an opportunity to play in the Rose Bowl parade when his Illinois team played there.  Unfortunately, he told the tale that a screw was lost from his instrument and he walked the several miles of the parade just holding his instrument pretending to play.

Over the years, Dave played in several community bands in Wooster, Litchfield and Medina.  Although the clarinet was his principal instrument he played oboe for a while and finally purchased an antique contra bass clarinet which he played in the Medina Community band.  His appearance at the end of the row near the audience produced several questions from interested audience members who had never seen the old “paper clip” instrument and even questioned what it was.

His interest in the Medina Community Band led to his compilation of it’s history.  Hours and hours were spent in the basement of the Medina Historical Society where he compiled much information from the original news articles.

Dave is survived by Jan, of Medina, OH; daughters Mary of North Port, FL and Lisa of Baltimore, OH; and sons Clayton of Lodi, OH and his wife Carolyn (Stallsmith), and Vance of Lafayette, IN, and his wife Nancy (McHenry).

He is also survived by his grandson Adam Van Doren, of Houston, TX, and granddaughters Emily Van Doren, of New Orleans, LA; Alden Ackerman of Boston, MA, and Evan Ackerman of North Port, FL; and by his sister Karen Lilleleht, of Charlottesville, VA, and her husband, Lembit; his niece, Erica Huber of Seattle, WA, and nephew, Mark Lilleleht of Madison, WI; one great-niece and one great-nephew.