Iowa State University Alumni Association| online edition | spring 1999

SPRING 1999
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Cover Story:
The Bells of Iowa State

Feature:
Driving Dr. Carver

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DRIVING DR. CARVER

It was spring, 1933. The country was mired in the Great Depression, and Al Zissler did not have a job. He had a shiny new electrical engineering degree from Iowa State College and a $1,900 debt to go with it. He also had the hand of Alice Beck, who had agreed to marry him – but not until he was gainfully employed.

And then, out of the clear spring sky came an invitation. Would he serve as a chauffeur for George Washington Carver, who was touring the southern states, giving lectures? The invitation came from an old college friend, Jim Hardwick. Both Hardwick and Zissler had established a long-distance friendship via letters with the famous scientist, who wanted to stay in touch with Iowa State students.

Zissler didn’t hesitate. He pocketed ten dollars and set off for Georgia. The fact that he had no car gave him not a moment’s pause. Today, he clearly remembers the day he departed on a journey that would affect him deeply.

“I stood by the highway just south of Ottumwa. It was early afternoon and I had spent the morning saying good-bye to Alice. I was dressed in a white shirt, oxford gray suit, and tie. People are more likely to pick up hitchhikers if you dress well. I carried a dark green slicker, and a large suitcase with IOWA STATE painted in large letters on the sides.”

Four days later, Zissler was greeting Carver as he stepped off the train from Tuskegee. Because African Americans were not allowed in the overnight Pullman car, the trip had been a long one. Carver emerged with stooped shoulders, a rumpled brown suit adorned with his customary wild flower boutonniere, and a presence that Zissler finds hard to describe.

“I felt that he could read me through and through, and that somehow he liked what he saw.”

For the next few weeks Zissler and Hardwick, on the threshold of their careers, would share time and space with an aging man who was at the pinnacle of his. They would come to know a man who forgave racism with such dignity that it seemed almost not to exist.

But exist it did. Zissler remembers the first time the threesome stopped for lunch, after Carver’s first presentation at Clemson College in South Carolina. Because Carver was not allowed in a white restaurant, the three stopped at a “colored” one. But the two white men felt so uncomfortable that the trio decided to picnic their way across the south, stopping at woods, parks, and rivers.

The exact content of Carver’s lectures has faded from the memory of 88-year-old Al Zissler. But he remembers well those spring picnics. Ham, potato chips, and for Carver, sardine cracker sandwiches. Zissler, who was the appointed cook, once even rigged up an impromptu grill with chicken wire for a barbecue.

As Zissler drove Dr. Carver across the south, the men fell into a comradely routine. Zissler tinkered with the bright blue Buick which daily threatened to expire; Hardwick read, and frequently quoted from his book by Jonathon Edwards, and Carver wandered off into the woods to collect plant specimens.

Frequent referrals to God’s will played a prominent role in their conversations, and Zissler would later note that “if Carver gave God credit for all of his discoveries and developments, maybe he’d give God a little credit for our car breakdown that contributed to his plant collection.”

Not only was the blue Buick mechanically challenged, it was also radio-less. So as the men bounced along, they sang – Carver, tenor; Zissler, bass; Hardwick, baritone. One of Carver’s favorite songs was a Negro spiritual:

Good Lord, I done done
Good Lord, I done done
Good Lord, I done done
I done done what you told me to.

Zissler remembers this song concluded one especially moving presentation. Carver had been particularly nervous before his lecture at a Negro theological school, C. Smith College. “He asked us to join him in prayer in the back room before the lecture. In the simplest words, Dr. Carver prayed that he might make his lecture worthwhile to everyone.”

Zissler recalls that the lecture that followed was one of the best he heard Carver give. The students in the audience closed the program by singing I Done Done.

Carver’s lectures included demonstrations of many of the products he had developed. He displayed for his audience samples of dyes and rubber that he had made from plants and clay, and many of the products made from sweet potatoes and peanuts.

Although white audience members often approached the event hesitantly, Zissler reports that by the evening’s end, they were intrigued, charmed, and awestruck. “I watched racism seemingly tense up the room at the beginning of the meeting, and then I watched it flow off people’s backs . . . .”

During the trip, Zissler frequently spoke to Carver about his concerns about a job. “Be open to new paths,” Carver encouraged him. Zissler cut the tour short to hitchhike to Chicago, where the World’s Fair held a job possibility.

But Chicago was a dead-end, and for the next few months Zissler’s professional paths were rocky – a stint selling suits door-to-door, one selling vacuum sweepers, and even Christmas cards. In late December 1933, he hitchhiked in 19-below-zero weather to a job interview in Dayton, Ohio. The Leland Electric Company was so impressed with his pluck that they offered him a job as a sales engineer.

Although Zissler corresponded occasionally with Carver in the years that followed, he was busy with his new job, new wife, and new family. Although Carver had mentioned he had something for him at Tuskegee (a painting perhaps?) Zissler never made the trip to Alabama. Six years passed with no communication between the men.

And then a letter arrived in May 1941. “I have been ill so long and so seriously,” wrote Carver, “that I am just now beginning to get where I can think a little. . . .I certainly think often about the wonderful days we spent together.”

That was the last communication Zissler received from Carver, who died Jan. 5, 1943.

“On looking back,” recalls Zissler, “this was the greatest regret in my life, that I never returned to Tuskegee to visit Dr. Carver and see his laboratory. . . . I had just assumed he would be there for me, like a father would be. As sons, too often we become caught up in our own lives and neglect to stop and reunite with those who gave us our wings.

“But I never forgot his remarkable spirit; it slipped in and out of my memory, but always found a home in my heart.”

About the Writer | Karol Crosbie is the former associate editor of VISIONS magazine.