Doran: Best wishes to Orion in his retirement

Orion Samuelson, the iconic agricultural broadcaster, will retire at the end of this month after 60 years at WGN Radio in Chicago.

Through the good and bad times of farming, Orion has been a steadfast advocate of agriculture, delivering the truth about food, fuel and fiber production to urban and rural households. Truth matters — despite what some believe — and we could always count on Orion to give us the facts.

Delivering agriculture’s message became more and more important over those six decades as the population became further removed from farming.

When Orion started, there were about 6.3 million persons working on 3.962 million U.S. farms. The most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture ag census found 3.4 million farmers and 2.023 million farms. Less is doing more as today the average U.S. farmer feeds 155 people and a farmer fed just 26 people in 1960.

We’ve come a long way in agriculture — and Orion has been the one consistent with his message.

Throughout his illustrious career in radio and television, he never ever forgot his roots growing up on the family dairy farm in Ontario, Wisconsin, and often took the listeners back to those special days.

He has received numerous well-deserved accolades over the years, including induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame, two Oscars in Agriculture, one each for radio and television, the 4-H Alumni Award, American Farm Bureau’s Distinguished Service Award, was inducted as Laureate to The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln, Illinois’ highest honor, an honorary degree from the University of Illinois, among many other honors.

I’ve attended numerous events over the past 15-plus years at AgriNews where “Big O” served as either the master of ceremony or keynote speaker, including regular MC duties at the Illinois State Fair’s Agriculture Day and the University of Illinois’ Salute to Agriculture Day.

I personally found out what a special person Orion was 12 years ago. He was the keynote speaker at the Illinois Commodities Conference in November 2008.

As usual with a keynoter, I wrote a story about his talk. Several weeks later, I received a postcard-size letter in the mail. It was a handwritten note from Orion on a “This Week in Agribusiness” postcard.

He wrote: “Hello, Tom. Just catching up with holiday mail and found your story in the Dec. 12 issue of AgriNews. As a speaker, I’m always concerned about being misquoted and I want to compliment you for an accurate portrayal of what I said. Outstanding job and I thank you. Orion.”

I’ve received several awards and honors over my long career, but this compliment was tops on the list. It was only appropriate that I’ve kept the letter in my memorabilia collection alongside other hall of famers.

Orion’s letter is right there with autographs from the likes of Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan, Wayne Gretzky, Whitey Herzog, Lou Brock and others. They’re in good company with Orion.

As a sidebar, my first discussion about Orion dates back to my freshman year at Southern Illinois University. Little did I realize at the time how life goes full circle.

I met with my communications adviser to go over what courses I should take for the next semester. Unfortunately, I can’t recall my adviser’s name. It was a long time ago, but he was a great guy.

My adviser noted that I was from a small town in farm country, and I said I spent part of my youth living on a farm. He knew Orion and said the two had discussions about the need for more ag communications folks.

At the time, my focus was more on the broadcast production side of the business, so I wasn’t interested in changing directions. Little did I know that 29 years later I’d get hired by AgriNews and enjoy a successful part of my career in the ag communications business.

Thank you, Orion, for being a guiding light in the wonderful world of agriculture.