From Melon Fields to Moon Rocks. Dianna Borsi O'Brien
developed working as a field hand served him well. In addition to teaching twenty-three to twenty-eight hours a week and working at his second job, he continued to work on the research he’d started with his Master’s Degree at OSU, keeping in mind he would need a doctorate to gain a position with a larger university.
Ever eager to see himself in charge, on his vitae Charles would later refer to his position as head of the Chemistry Department, although the entire department consisted of Charles W. Gehrke. Charles liked Missouri Valley College and helping students. In 1945, as a faculty adviser, he helped establish a chapter of the fraternity Alpha Omicron of Alpha Sigma Phi on campus.
In the meantime, Virginia had traded her job teaching high school for one teaching business classes at Missouri Valley College. In Marshall, the two lived within a block of the college, in the Brown Apartments, where many of Missouri Valley’s faculty lived. Charles said they enjoyed “mixing it up with” the other teachers and staff members. They’d also become active members of the local Presbyterian church.
It seemed the American dream was coming true for them in all ways except one: a family of their own.
When the first miscarriage took place, Virginia was seven months pregnant and had fallen down some stairs. The loss cut like a knife, and, at ninety, Charles still spoke of the death with obvious pain. Two years later they lost another child, this one at birth. “The cord was wrapped around its neck, and it just gave up,” said Charles.
In her quiet way, Virginia felt her pain and kept it to herself. For a while, she refused to socialize with other couples who had children, and she stopped going to church. Charles respected her silence.
Even her childhood friend Ruth Jarvis said Virginia spoke little about the loss, although Virginia did tell Ruth how much it hurt being in the same ward with mothers and their babies when she herself did not have a child of her own.
If one dream was temporarily stymied, other dreams were moving ahead. In 1945, Missouri Valley College granted Charles permission to take a year off to attend Ohio State University for his doctorate—and even paid his tuition. In return, Charles agreed to return to Marshall to teach at least one more year after his studies.
“Ohio State University was how I got into Missouri Valley,” said Charles, “and that’s how I got out of Missouri Valley.”
Chapter 9
Back to OSU, 1945-46
Back in Columbus for a year, Charles taught as an instructor in Dairy Chemistry while working on doctoral studies. He had been continuing his research while he was in Marshall, sending data to his adviser from time to time, and now he began his studies and research in earnest.
Virginia reluctantly followed him there, taking a job in the office of the Ohio Secretary of State and later with the Ohio Manufacturing Association in downtown Columbus. Charles hoped the move would help take her mind off the losses she’d suffered.
In Columbus, Charles began what would eventually become his life’s work: measuring the chemical makeup of substances. His work continued what he’d begun during his Master’s Degree: research on the chemical activity of ions in milk. He again turned to examining milk, but with a new slant. Using a procedure involving ion-exchange resins, Charles investigated how various chemicals in milk worked, whether certain chemicals were bound or in a free state as ions. He focused on calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, phosphate, and citrate. The point of the work was to discern how much actual nutrition was available in milk. No matter how much calcium or other chemicals are in milk, if it isn’t bioavailable, the body can’t use it.
In short, Charles’s research focused on revealing one of the secrets of milk: its value as a nutritional source for calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, phosphate, and citrate.
Charles said he saw a positive research direction in looking at milk. At the time, Pet Milk of St. Louis was interested in improving the stability of milk and evaporated milk.
Beyond his research, Charles met the other requirements of his studies easily, including the language proficiencies. Sitting in on the French classes at Missouri Valley College paid off: Charles took the exams for French and German on the same day at Ohio State, passing both, a feat he said no one had ever accomplished before.
While in Columbus, Charles set a goal for the future. He recalled the day he was walking across the campus of Ohio State University in 1947 and decided that one day he would earn $10,000 a year.
Chapter 10
Finally a Father
After the year in Columbus, Charles and Virginia returned to Marshall. The next spring, with Charles closing in on thirty and Virginia approaching twenty-eight, they welcomed their first son, Charles W. Gehrke Jr., on May 27, 1947. At last, Virginia’s arms were filled.
That summer, when Charles returned to Columbus to finish his studies, Virginia remained in Marshall, and Lil, Charles’s sister, came to stay with the new mother. It was not an idyllic summer for Lil or Virginia. A strong, if quiet, personality, Virginia wasn’t used to being helped. Although only six years older than Lil, she saw herself as Lil’s guardian and tried to supervise her. It wasn’t a particularly good fit.
Lil was twenty-two and, like Charles, had experienced little direct or curbing supervision from her mother while she was growing up. She chafed at Virginia’s well-meaning guidance. Lil said her solution was to try to stay out of Virginia’s way while Virginia attempted to make sure Lil wasn’t getting into trouble.
In the end, however, Lil said Virginia’s suggestions about learning business skills and earning teaching credentials served her well. After attending Missouri Valley College, Lil returned to Ohio and taught business in high school while she continued her studies, eventually earning a Bachelor’s Degree.
When Charles returned to Marshall, however, he began a different approach to helping his sister, a tactic Lil recalled with a chuckle. He enlisted one of his students—a good-looking one—to help Lil with her chemistry studies and other coursework.
Like Charles, Lil saw education as her ticket out of Coshocton and poverty. Before moving to Marshall, Lil had had her own taste of menial work. In high school, she worked as a housekeeper and then a nanny for a local family, and, like Charles, she recalled her wages: fifty cents a week plus meals and lodging. Once the war had heated up the economy, Lil left those jobs and worked in a local Coshocton war plant, sealing gas tanks and making better wages.
Chapter 11
State Chemist and Professor at the University of Missouri
In December 1947, Charles earned a Doctorate in Agricultural Biochemistry from Ohio State University and immediately set his sights beyond Marshall.
By 1949, he had three offers on the table—and a story he loved to tell. He even joked about it at his retirement dinner in November 1987.
The University of Connecticut in Storrs had offered him a job as an Assistant Professor in Dairy Science for $4,800 a year. The University of California in Davis had offered him a job as a Dairy Chemist for $4,800. The University of Missouri, after negotiations, offered him $5,400 for a position as an Associate Professor in the College of Agriculture.
At his retirement dinner from MU, Charles said the $600 difference in salaries explained why he ended up in Columbia, Missouri.
As usual with Charles, the entire story was a little more complicated.
While Virginia and Charles lived in Marshall, Missouri, they had remained close to their family and friends, making periodic treks back to Ohio. On nearly every trip, Charles also visited his former Chemistry teacher, Richard McKissick.
These trips of nearly seven hundred miles were indeed treks. The National Interstate and Defense Highway Act wouldn’t go into effect until 1956, and Missouri didn’t start building its portion of the interstate network of roads traveled today until the late 1950s.
“Those