‘Never Turned Away From the Farm’ : He Left Land but Still Calls It Home

SHAWNEE MISSION, Kan.--At 40, Bill Hoch has been gone from his family’s dairy farm half of his life, but he says he carries its early lessons with him every day.

He believes many of his generation left rural life behind because they were profoundly influenced by the global images that reached them through mass communication.

“All of a sudden we started seeing things from around the nation, around the world, even from the moon. For our parents that was the stuff of which daydreams were made, not reality--but for us it could become reality.

“The mid-to-late ‘60s created an enormous, almost magnetic pull on people like myself, pulling us away from small-town, rural life. The attraction was political, social, artistic, but it all crested on the wave of the communications revolution.”

Hoch remembers growing up on the farm near Emporia and delivering milk to small towns and country schools that have vanished.

“When you look at rural life and how it’s changed in the last 20 years, it’s easy to get depressed,” he said. “I find it destructive and regrettable that so much has disappeared, because beyond the economic impact, the loss has created a vacuum.”

As a resident of this suburb, Hoch regularly enjoys the concerts, plays and sporting events Kansas City offers, “and I’d be reluctant to give that up. I enjoy the amenities of a city.” He needs a metropolitan market for his communications business.

He and his wife, Ellen, visit Emporia frequently. His hometown, 100 miles southwest of Kansas City, has grown from 15,000 residents when he lived there to about 30,000 today.

“There’s an enormous sense of stability in knowing my family still lives on that same 100 acres we’ve owned for the better part of a century,” he said.

Hoch’s pony, Rusty, died only a few years ago at the age of 35 and was lovingly buried in his corral near the old family home. The pull of the place, where coming home for Christmas is expected, remains strong.

“There used to be dozens of trucks and cars coming and going every hour to the dairy. Now, Mom and Dad go to town once a day, and that’s the only dust churned up in the driveway. Even town has changed. It used to be 10 miles away. Now it’s grown so much it’s only three or four miles to the outskirts.”

Hoch is grateful for the values he gained from spending his first 20 years on the farm. He says those years are the foundation upon which he has built his urban life.

“I never turned away from the farm, I just physically left. I wrestled with the choices. On the one hand there were dependable, stable values and a very predictable way of life. On the other . . . the excitement and challenge of the unknown.

“I never intended to stay away. I always thought I would go back. I still think that.”