
Ray Pollert
(deceased)
Clarinda, IA
(2004) |
Raymond Pollert was born January 27, 1908 in Sauers,
Indiana. He passed away February 9, 1992.
Ray and his family moved to the Clarksdale, Missouri
area in 1919 where his father bought a farm. When
Ray was 17, he moved to Clarinda, Iowa and worked
on a farm.
He married Clytha Edmonds in 1932 in Kansas City,
Missouri. They had one daughter, Sandra Kay.
When World War II broke out, Ray was too old to be
called to battle. However, he felt that feeding the
American people and our soldiers overseas was just
as important as carrying a rifle. He farmed on a large
scale even my mid-forties standards-producing wheat,
corn, hogs, cattle, and selling implements from Massey-Harris.
He was instrumental in establishing and participating
in the Harvest Brigades that Massey-Harris promoted
to get combines in the hands of 500 men that would
agree to harvest 2000 acres per machine. He would
go on the combine tour during those Harvest Brigades
to run, ramrod, mechanic, and be the public relations
person. The public relations person would go in front
of the machines lining up jobs for the combines as
they move north. However he would never admit that
the PR position required one to be an individual that
was somewhat of a “BS-er (Better-salesman),
he filled the position better than most. He could
sell a Massey combine to a man that already had 4
John Deere’s, two Gleaners, and an International,
and the man would like it, and thank him for it.
Ray quit being a Massey-Harris-Ferguson dealer in
1960 and started buying land in Holt county Missouri.
One of Ray’s tenants in his latter years thought
that Ray ought to be President. He had more common
sense than all of Washington D.C. put together. |