Dear TIME-Reader:

This week's cover story on an extraordinary farm lad is in large part the work of another farm lad not so many years senior to Star Farmer Joe Moore. The assignment of T. George Harris to the story of the 21-year-old winner of the Future Farmers of America award was a natural.

Harris, 31, was recently named to head our Chicago Bureau. The dozen years prior to that he had devoted in about equal measure to the university, the Army and journalism. And behind that was the land.

George Harris grew up on a 280-acre farm in Todd County, Ky., 100 miles or more from Joe Moore's home across the line in Tennessee. By the time he was ten, his pre-dawn routine included milking eight cows and helping feed the hogs and mules. The big breakfast that followed was easily worked off in a three-mile hike to school. Summers it was full time at chopping corn, suckering tobacco, pitching hay. By the time he was eleven he was plowing a mule to a double shovel, and the next year he was allowed now and then to drive the new tractor.

After high school, George, who loved the farm but always wanted to be a reporter, went to work for the Clarksville (Tenn.) Leaf-Chronicle. He went into the Army in 1943. A reconnaissance sergeant in the field artillery, he worked as a forward observer with the infantry after he was commissioned on the battlefield during the Battle of the Bulge. After three years in the Army, he studied history at the University of Kentucky and finished up at Yale, where he made Phi Beta Kappa and was president of the Political Union. He was one of ten undergraduates to win overseas scholarships for study at Oxford. He joined us six years ago.

Last week, after spending a strenuous six days with Joe at his farm, George was back home again, visiting with his parents and writing his research for this week's story. "The farm is still home," he wrote me. "And along the creek is a good place to walk and think."

Cordially yours,

James A. Linen

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.