[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 195 (Thursday, November 30, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7558-S7559]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REMEMBERING WESLEY F. BUCHELE

 Mr. ROBERTS. Mr. President, today I want to honor the life and 
work of a man whose inventions--most notably, the large round hay 
baler--literally changed the landscape of America. Wesley Fisher 
Buchele, a native Kansan and professor emeritus of agricultural 
engineering at Iowa State University, died September 13, 2017, at a 
hospice in Ames, IA. He was age 97.
  Wes and his twin brother Luther were born in a Kansas farmhouse near 
Cedar Vale, KS, on March 18, 1920, to Charles and Bessie (Fisher) 
Buchele. Wesley and Luther were the youngest of seven Buchele brothers.
  Growing up on a Kansas farm in the 1920s and 1930s was hard work. 
Economic depression in rural America started early in the 1920s and 
worsened when the Great Depression hit the entire country in 1929. When 
Wes was 11, his father, Charles Buchele, died, leaving Wes's mother and 
the Buchele brothers to run the family farm. Wes and Luther and several 
other brothers were still in school.
  The Bucheles ran a raw milk farm. Among other jobs, Wes delivered 
fresh milk early in the morning on his way to school, which sometimes 
made him late to school. When the principal found out why Wes was late, 
he essentially gave Wes permission to be late if needed, saying that 
Wes had made more money for his family that morning than the principal 
would make all week.
  All the brothers worked to fill their father's shoes, driven by the 
fear of losing the family farm because of a $5,000 mortgage, roughly 
$60,000 in today's money. They succeeded. At the close of the 
Depression, the Buchele farm was the only one in their valley stil1 in 
the same family's hands as at the beginning of the Depression.
  At age 15, Wes was running a four-man threshing crew, when ``it was 
105 deg.F in the shade--and there was no shade!'' The Buchele brothers 
bought a used tractor and ran it 24 hours a day, doing contract field 
work. One night, Wes pulled a night shift on that tractor, and while 
plowing, he woke up as the tractor powered through a fence.
  The experiences of the sweaty, dirty, grueling work of threshing 
grain and baling hay led him to a lifelong interest in making the lives 
of farmers easier and safer.
  After graduating from Cedar Vale High School, Wes enrolled at Kansas 
State College where he earned bachelor of Science degree in 
agricultural engineering. While at Kansas State, Wes met Mary Jagger. 
They were married at Mary's hometown of Minneapolis, KS, on June 12, 
1945.
  At K-State, Wes enlisted in the Reserve Officers Training Corps, 
ROTC. As second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, Wes was on a troop ship 
sailing toward Japan for the anticipated invasion when Japan announced 
its surrender after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki. Wes was part of the demilitarizing force on the island of 
Hokkaido and the northern part of the island of Honshu, Japan. After 
World War II, Wes served in the Army Reserve for 20 years, retiring as 
a major.
  After leaving Active Army Duty, Wes worked as an engineer for several 
years for John Deere in Waterloo, IA. He then left John Deere to do 
graduate work at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where he 
earned his master's degree agricultural and mechanical engineering. He 
and Mary then moved to Ames, IA, where he earned his Ph.D. in 
agricultural engineering and soil physics at Iowa State University.
  After earning his Ph.D., Wes taught at Michigan State University in 
East Lansing, MI, before returning to Iowa State University in 1963 to 
join its faculty.
  As noted by his son, Steven Buchele, after the move back to Ames, 
``Dad never worked another day of his life. For Dad, it was all fun and 
interesting and ISU encouraged his imagination and he loved teaching 
and inventing things. It wasn't work, and he earned the name `Wild 
Wes.' ''
  He also earned the name ``Blood and Guts Buchele'' for how he 
championed the cause of farm machinery safety. In class, he showed 
hundreds of slides of people who had lost arms or legs, hands or feet 
to a PTO shaft or a grain auger or what a farmer looked like after 
being sprayed with anhydrous ammonia. One student said that he never 
looked at farming the same way after seeing Wes's slides.
  At Iowa State, Wes's creativity blossomed. He published hundreds of 
technical articles, aided greatly by the able editing of his wife, 
Mary. He was awarded 23 patents, the two most notable being the large 
round baler and the axial-flow threshing cylinder for combines. Almost 
all combines sold today are rotary combines that employ a variation of 
the axial-flow threshing cylinder.
  Wes also designed blade guards for rotary lawn mowers, a tandem 
tractor--a precursor to the four-wheel drive tractor--and devices for 
harvesting crops like strawberries, alfalfa, and marigolds. He 
developed a ridge-till farming system that, in addition to saving 
farmers time and fuel, also helped the environment by conserving 
topsoil and soil moisture. It was a precursor to today's ``No-till 
farming.''
  Wes loved teaching and mentoring the hundreds of graduate students 
who came from all over the world specifically to study with him. Upon 
graduation, they then went into industry or back to their home 
countries, helping further improve agricultural practices throughout 
the world.
  Wes published three books: ``The Grain Harvesters'' with Graeme 
Quick, in 1978; ``Just Call Us Luck'' with twin brother, Luther, about 
their childhood in Kansas, in 2008; and ``Who Really Invented the 
Cotton Gin'' with William D. Mayfield in 2016. He also wrote many other 
unpublished books, including a volume two to the Grain Harvesters, and 
hundreds of short stories.
  Leading up to and after retirement in 1989, Mary and Wes traveled the 
world, teaching in China before and after Tiananmen Square, in Ghana, 
Australia, Tanzania, Nigeria, and the Philippines.
  After the death of his wife, Mary, in 2000, Wes wou1d visit, his four 
children and their spouses--Rod and his wife, Mary Lou, Marybeth, 
Sheron and her husband, Curtis, and Steven and his wife, Suzanne, his 
eight grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, staying for 6 weeks 
to 2 months, depending on ``the list.'' ``When Dad arrived, he would 
ask for `the list,' a list of things that needed fixing around the 
house, promising to stay only as long as there were things to do on 
that list. Then he would move on to the next child's family--and a new 
list,'' said Steve Buchele.
  On Labor Day 2017, Wes decided to mow the backyard of the home in 
Ames he shared with his daughter, Marybeth. As he used a rope to lower 
the lawn mower down a slope to finish mowing,

[[Page S7559]]

he had a major stroke. Nine days later, he died, after hundreds of 
friends and family came to hospice to say good-bye.
  Wes Buchele lived a long, full, productive life with energy and 
verve. He had, indeed, fulfilled his calling to help make the lives of 
farmers easier and safer, and our country and our world are better for 
that.

                          ____________________