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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Agriculture Series R. KEITH SEVERIN Interviewed by: Allan Mustard Interview Date: September 16, 2006 Copyrig t 2008 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Background Born in Te as, Raised in California Chaffee College$ University of California, Davis$ Stanford University Marriage America Samoa$ Agriculture Instructor )US Govt., 19.1-19.0 Operations Fiji Disease Control Ha1aiian Sugar Planters Association 2nvironment Robert 4ouis Stevenson grave 5elseyville, California$ Farming 19.0-19.4 US Army 19.4-19.7 French language study, Monterey, CA Offenbach, Germany German language study, Oberammergau8 19.4-19.. Bremerhaven, Germany$ refugee emigrant intervie1ing 4ondon visit Stanford University 19.7-19.8 Department of Agriculture$ 2conomic Research Service 19.8-1970 Office of Foreign Agricultural Relations )OFAR, Mosco1, USSR Assistant Agricultural Attach; 1970-1977 Family Personnel Hubert Humphrey visit 2nvironment 4ocal travel 1 Soviet crop failure and grain purchase 5hrushchev removal Soviet agricultural bureaucracy Relations 1ith officials Department of Agriculture$ ASCS$ Chief, Wheat 2 port Subsidies 1977-1989 5ennedy Round negotiations Personalities Foreign Wheat Boards International Grains Arrangement Congressional interest Soviet )Brezhnev, 1heat purchases Wheat pricing US-Soviet Joint Cooperation Agreement World Board Boris Runov Grain Teams 2stimating Soviet Grain crop Retirement 1989 Post Retirement 1991- US Department of Agriculture )Recall,$ Advisor Post-Soviet agriculture Private sector$ Agriculture advisor Foreign travel - Team assignments USSR travel precautions @The Soviet Union after BrezhnevA Dealing 1ith the Soviets Soviet official personalities Congressional interest INTERVIEW Q: We%re in t e residence of Keit and Barbara Severin in Virginia. It is t e 16t of September, 2006, and would you please tell us, Keit , a little bit about your bac,ground, w ere you were born and w ere you grew up, and ow you ended up going to college- S2B2RIC8 I 1as born in the panhandle of Te as during the days of the Dust Bo1l, maybe before the Dust Bo1l really got started. In Covember of 1902, I remember very 1ell, I 1as just a little guy. My mother and father had come to to1n and probably voted for FDR and they left me 1ith Aunt Pearl. Uncle Bill, her husband, he 1as manager of the local farm co-op there in Booker, Te as, and Booker, at that time, and the greater metropolitan area, probably had a population of 000. It 1as so big, in fact, that the ne1spaper in to1n, the EBooker Ce1s,E a 1eekly, put out a calendar every year and one 2 page for each month, and for 1hatever day of the month it 1as, the person in the area 1hose birthday that happened to be, that 1as 1ritten in there on the calendar. But, any1ay, I remember that day that FDR 1as elected because I 1as running around in Uncle Bill and Aunt PearlFs backyard and had a sucker in my mouth and fell do1n and broke the sucker stick off in my tonsil, but nonetheless. So I 1as born in the Dust Bo1l of the panhandle of Te as. In March of 190., my mother and father took off for California 1ith four little boys, I being the oldest, and my youngest brother at that time, the fourth of us boys, Taylor, 1as just four months old. And 1e really left because Taylor 1as a sickly, puny little guy and very prone to dust pneumonia and, had 1e stayed there, 1e 1ould have lost him. So March 190., 1e 1ent to southern California, 1here my motherFs oldest sister had gone, she and her family, a year or so before. So 1e 1ent there. As I put it, though, everything that has happened, the grapes of 1rath 1ere not all sour, not 1here the Severins 1ere concerned, the reason being my father, 1ho had no education, 1as a good and reliable 1orker. He could do anything. And my mother 1as a good 1orker, too. Her mother died 1hen my mother 1as 11 years old, and my mother never really had a girlhood, never had a childhood, because she 1as at home 1ith t1o older brothers, a father and five younger sisters, and she had to take care of all of them. And she 1ent to school, too. We kne1 ho1 to get things done, and it occurred to me the other day that the first house that 1e lived in, in Pomona, California, 700 West Monterey Street, I remember there 1as the milkman, 1ho drove his 1agon do1n the street, delivering milk, and he had a horse. I had a little red 1agon, and I follo1ed him do1n the street and got the horse manure and brought it back, and that 1ent into our garden. So I kno1 about these kind of things. That brings it to mind, too, that 1e 1ere so poor there in the panhandle of Te as, and goodness only kno1s, there 1ere no trees, very, very fe1 trees, and only then along the creek bottom. But I 1ould take my little red 1agon and go out in the pasture and pick up co1 chips. ThatFs 1hat 1e used to heat the houses 1ith. ThatFs 1hat mother used for her cook stove, so IFve been close to it all my life. I kno1 1hat the real stuff is. And so 1e 1ere there in southern California and in 1907 my mother had another boy, 5enton. That 1as the youngest, and there are just a couple 1eeks less than seven years bet1een me and 5enton, the oldest and the youngest, and gre1 up there in southern California, al1ays having to 1ork, al1ays 1orking, doing something, 1orking in stores, learning to get along 1ith people, helping people. I remember in World War II, for e ample, 1hen 1e 1ere living in 2l Monte, 1e had a place 1ith about an acre and 1e had a co1 and 1e had chickens, of course, and 1e had rabbits, and I had some racing pigeons, as 1ell. I had a hundred does, rabbits. I had a hundred does and so I raised rabbits in World War II and 1ould kill them at eight 1eeks old and butcher them and IFd cut them up and sell the meat for a dollar, but I 1as getting 0 more than that for the rabbit hide, 1hich I dried. And getting more than that for the hide because rabbit fur, rabbit hide, 1ere used to line the jackets of bomber pilots and folks 1ho 1ere in aircraft. So I 1as there and graduated from high school at 17, a dumb thing to do, because I hadnFt really gro1n up, but I kne1 ho1 to 1ork. I just kne1 ho1 to 1ork and graduated from high school at 17 and 1ent to live 1ith my grandparents, 1ho 1ere about 00 miles a1ay. Their youngest son 1as a1ay and in the Army, then. And Jack is only about three years older than I am, but he 1as a1ay and in the Army and I lived 1ith my grandparents, thatFs my motherFs father and stepmother, and they had moved to southern California, there. My first year in college, I didnFt have a car yet. I didnFt have a car yet. But I hitchhiked to school. I 1alked about t1o miles to the high1ay, to the main high1ay, and then got a ride for about 10 miles up the road and I still had a mile and a half going the other direction to go to school. But thatFs ho1 I did my first year in college, and that 1as at Chaffey College, in Ontario, California. And 1hat a time for me to be a 17-year-old, first year in college. What a time it 1as because that 1as e actly the year that the vets, the veterans from World War II, came back and 1ent to college. And my best friend, 2lmore Worth, 1as the same age as my father. The second year in college, my parents had move from 2l Monte over to Ontario, and that summer that they had moved, probably helping to make the decision to move 1as that my brother, 5enneth, just younger than I G 1e 1ere Huite close, 5enny and I G had been killed in an airplane crash. But, any1ay, I think that helped them move from 1here 1e 1ere at the time, from 1here they 1ere living there at the time. They moved to Ontario, California, and so I 1as living at home. It 1as that summer that I bought my first car, a 1904 Chevy Coupe, I49.. It 1as the first car that I ever drove, and it 1as money that IFd earned myself, .0 cents an hour. I kne1 ho1 to drive because I had been driving not only tractors, but Marine trucks. There in the Te as panhandle, IFd go back and help and 1ork for particularly Aunt Alice, 1ho 1as my motherFs sister, and Aunt Alice and Uncle Harold had to help them, 1ork for them in the summertime. Si dollars a day, if the harvest 1as finished and you 1ere plo1ing or I8 a day if it 1as still during grain harvest. Of course, that included room and board. You 1orked hard, but you felt good and you 1ere 1. miles from to1n and never any opportunity to go to to1n to spend that I7 or I8 a day that you 1ere getting, but good times, good summers. So, at the end of my second year in college, I had, of course, a degree in general agriculture, I supposed youFd say, from Chaffey College. And Re Wignall had been my main teacher.