ray fort and dr. ray fort and ulysses kansas and cornell university and agriculture and pakistan and iran and nepal and sterling college som fort

As I was planning a trip to Cheyenne, WY and Denver, CO this summer, I decided to add to it a detour into Kansas. Most people think that heading East into KS from CO in late June means you have taken a wrong turn. But I lived and taught in KS for six years (1990-96) and wanted an opportunity to visit the state I left nine years ago under not completely joyous circumstances. So I arranged a lunch with a former student in Garden City, KS and then decided to look up another old acquaintance, Dr. Ray Fort, who retired in 1990 to Ulysses, KS after 36 years working for the State Department and the United Nations. Dr. Fort was an agricultural specialist with a Ph. D. in agricultural economics from Cornell, and lived and worked those 36 years primarily in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. He can be credited with making a major contribution to the agricultural self-sufficiency of Afghanistan before the Soviets came in and destroyed the economy and agricultural system in 1979.

Our paths crossed in a significant way (see below) while I taught at Sterling College (KS) from 1990-96, and I wanted to see how he was doing during my KS visit of 2005. A quick internet search for him pulled up two articles from the Garden City (KS) newspaper. The first was an interview from 2002, which described his contributions to "post-war" Afghanistan and his desire to help the country return to agricultural self-sufficiency. The second was a 2003 article announcing his death to cancer on April 30, 2003. When I read the second article I sat stunned for several minutes, and a flood of memories, mingled with regrets came over me. In losing Ray Fort, America and the world has lost a great but quiet agriculturalist, a person who has done more to secure world peace and stability than wars on terrorism and showy diplomatic summits. In losing Ray Fort, I had lost someone whose wisdom, practical knowledge and humble friendship was crucial to me at a trying time in my own life.

Meeting Ray Fort

I met Ray Fort as people often meet other people in life: through children. Ray's son Som was a student of mine at Sterling College in the early 1990s, and on one visit to the college Ray introduced himself to me. I had gotten to know Som because Som wanted to major in history and government (my field), and I ended up being his advisor for his senior paper on Kemal Ataturk. Som was adopted by Ray and Joan Fort when they were in Nepal in the early 1970s. Som was malnourished and sick, and they adopted him and nursed him back to health. Som was always a slow learner, however, but he more than made up for this lack with his sweet spirit, genuine Christian faith and broad vision of the world. He was one of the most popular students on campus, with a smile and kind word for everyone. Upon graduating from Sterling, he sent me a card, signed in pencil and saying simply, "Dear Dr. Long, Thank you for listening to me and for giving me a chance. Love, Somi." I will always cherish the card.

When I met Ray and learned of his past, I was immediately impressed. It was as if more than a fresh breeze had blown into my life. I saw right away that Ray possessed academic expertise, immense practical experience of the world, insight into the workings of major domestic and international agencies, understanding of Islam (which at that time was very little understood in America), and detailed acquiantance with several languages whose names, much less whose words, are unknown to Americans. And, he wanted to teach. He wanted to share the knowledge gained in 36 years of field work in the far reaches of the Central Asian world. Ray's experience and training could have qualified him to teach at any university in the country; he chose to visit me at Sterling because it was the nearest college to him in Ulysses and because of his son Som.

Lessons Learned from Ray

It would be easy to say that I learned lots of things from Ray about a part of the world about which I knew little. Certainly he was full of stories of ambassadors and kings and presidents and diplomats, of farmers and townspeople trying to fashion a life in Afghanistan, India, Iran, and Pakistan. But that isn't what most impressed me about Ray. Rather, what stays with me are two personal traits that must have been evident to any who worked with him--his collegial humility and his gratitude to be alive. Though most of his stories have faded from memory, these two traits never will. Let me tell you how I remember these in him.

A. Collegiality. We hired Ray to teach a class during Interterm (January) on issues in the developing world. Though Ray knew the world of which he spoke far better than almost anyone who taught it, he used to come to me with his syllabus, his lecture notes, his books and ask me what I thought about what he wanted to do. He would discuss various ways he might present the problem of limited resources or the conflicts between the UN and the US State Department or the ways in which one might work with various factions in a divided society. Ray wanted my insight. Was he presenting things clearly? Was this a problem that students could understand? Was he assuming too much or too little by presenting these things to them? On and on came his questions. I was humbled by them; I was humbled by his collegial humility. I shared what little I could with a person who obviously was a master in his field.

B. Gratitude. I saw Ray's gratitude in a different way. During the January session, Ray and Joan would drive their mobile home up to Sterling, park it out by Sterling Lake for the month and live there. For a couple who had roughed it in some of the roughest enviroments on earth, this "roughing it" in January in Sterling seemed like a vacation to them. On occasion I would walk out to the Lake and visit Ray at his home. One clear afternoon, when the sun was shining with a rare intensity, glistening through the patches of ice on the lake, sending out its prismatic beauty through the crystals that hung from Ray's rearview mirror, he and I had a wide-ranging talk about academics and US foreign policy and life in Kansas. As I was getting up to leave, he shook my hand, smiled at me and said, "Bill, isn't it great to be alive and living in Kansas?" For a man 24 years his junior, who was trying to be "on the make" with the world, who felt that Kansas was at best a hindrance and at most an exile, Ray's words hit me with a peculiar power that I hadn't really realized until today. I didn't answer him then, but I will now. "Yes, Ray, it was great to be alive and living in Kansas. It really was."

Conclusion

So, I never had a chance to say my good-byes to Ray. It is my loss, I know. He is almost unknown in that medium, the Internet, that increasingly seems to want to track the movements of every living American. One would glean only the barest outline of his life from the two articles on the Net that mention him. Ray's life is a standing indictment against those who equate the number of "hits" on their web pages or their "Google placement" with success in life. For Ray lived life well, and showed me that the ways of gratitude and humble collegiality are the things that really are the marks of success in life. I only wish I could have relayed my thanks to him for these life lessons.

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