IT TAKES A LIFETIME: Moery left college to learn how to run the family farm

Kyle Moery, Robert Moery and Robert "Sonny" Moery on the family farm in Carlisle
Kyle Moery, Robert Moery and Robert "Sonny" Moery on the family farm in Carlisle


Robert "Sonny" Moery was studying for a bacteriology exam at 11:30 p.m. one night in 1959 when he got a phone call that changed his life.

His mother was on the line when he picked up the phone at the end of the hallway in the dormitory on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville, where he was a sophomore agriculture major. His father had just suffered a heart attack, she said, and he needed to get to a Little Rock hospital quickly.

Moery's father was his first concern, of course. But he and his family would later decide that he would need to drop out of college and take over the family farm in Carlisle.

The learning curve would be steep.

"I never really was a farm boy," says Moery, 83. "We lived in town. I played football and baseball and basketball, and I never worked on the farm a whole lot."

Moery didn't have a car when he was in college, and after that phone call he was struggling to figure out how he might get to his father's bedside. Some older students appeared and drove him down the mountain, through the night, to the hospital.

He was relieved to find his father alive and in an oxygen tent. He put on a brave face for his mother and sister, but when he got a chance he followed his father's doctor into the hallway.

"I asked him, 'What are his chances?' And he said, '30%,'" Moery says. "I walked into the stairway at St. Vincent and I lost it. That's when I realized how serious it was."

He remembers a nurse in a white uniform happening upon him in the stairwell and gathering him into a hug.

Moery's father defied those odds and went home, though he was unable to return to farming. He lived for five more years.

"That saved me. Had I been by myself I might not have been able to run the farm, but he would come out and we would talk," he says. "We talked a lot."

Moery discovered the Lonoke County Extension agent and other farmers in the area as he found his way around the farm.

"My neighbors, my dad's friends, would come by and tell me what they were doing," he says. "They weren't telling me what to do, but I would listen to what they were doing and figure out what I needed to do, too. And I had two hired men."

It was the planting season when he took over. There weren't soybean and corn crops then like there are now.

"We had 500 acres of oats, and I had never driven a combine, so one of the mechanics up at Carlisle came out and showed me how. It was really a blessing," he says. "I cut that 500 acres of oats myself and then that way when I cut the rice I knew what I was doing."

Being quarterback for the Carlisle Bisons in high school helped prepare him for this, he says.

"I knew how to lead and I had a good memory and I was in good shape," he says. "When you're a quarterback you've got to make 10 other people happy and still get the job done. It turned out to be good training."

Moery's grandfather had owned the farm, about nine miles from the house he built in Carlisle in 1919, where Moery now lives with his wife, Martha.

"He was one of the first farmers to move to Carlisle," says Moery of his grandfather. He was only 2 years old when his grandfather died, but he surmises the purpose of the move was to be closer to shops, doctors and schools.

Much has changed about farming since Moery got his start. There are lasers for leveling rice levies, but back in 1960, he had to do that on foot.

"That was my least favorite job," he says. "You would have to come out here in the morning and start walking to survey and you would stop and eat your lunch and walk the rest of the day. Now they have lasers and GPS and all that."

Moery has served on the Riceland Foods board of directors and then was elected justice of the peace.

"I served there for 10 years," he says of the county office. "When I was 75, I decided I didn't want to be the older man on the JP, so I stepped down from that. But I really enjoyed serving and I learned a lot, even though I have been here all my life."

Moery's son, Kyle, runs the farm these days.

"He has control of the farm but I still work on the farm," he says. "I come out here every day."

Moery is proud to pass down the farm, in their family for more than a century, that some people in town hadn't believed he would be able to keep going.

"That really helped, that a lot of people thought this young man coming in here would have no way of surviving," he says. "I hope I've made my dad and my granddad proud."

If you have an interesting story about an Arkansan 70 or older, please call 501-425-7228 or email:

kdishongh@adgnewsroom.com


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