Winter 2005

Seeds for the Future:
Teacher and Apprentice

Bob Betz at Fermilab Prairie.

Martin Valenzuela grew up in a rural Mexican town where gardening was considered woman's work. During his fourteen and a half years as a cook in Fermilab's Wilson Hall, he looked out the windows at Betz's prairie.

"I always wanted to be lucky enough to work out there," he says. Six years ago Valenzuela joined the grounds crew and quickly discovered his passion and skill for handling prairie seeds. He runs teacher, docent, and student workshops in his seed barn; his kitchen colanders have found a new life cleaning seeds and this bilingual man of the prairie has picked up a third language: Latin botanical.

"I was at the North American Prairie Conference and I bought a new dictionary with pronunciations. I have yet to show it to Dr. Betz," says Valenzuela. "I'm sure he's going to laugh."

"You can't overlook these small sites," says Betz's former student, Marcy DeMauro, of Betz's beloved Vermont Cemetery, which sits on just one acre surrounded by corn and soybean fields. "It's important to buffer them by acquiring land around them."

After hearing Betz's stories of managed land restoration, DeMauro switched her major to biology, eventually becoming director of planning for the Forest Preserve District of Will County. Acquiring the land around Vermont Cemetery took the district nine years, but today there are 25 buffering acres with 25 additional acres being donated for trail development. The first thing DeMauro did when the acquisition was confirmed was call Betz: "He was ecstatic," she says.

And Betz has planted seeds for the future. Three years ago, Ryan Campbell was hired as a summer intern collecting prairie plant seeds at Fermilab; today, he's a plant biology major at Southern Illinois University. His experience working with the grounds crew and Dr. Betz these past summers completely changed his life direction. "Dr. Betz is like my surrogate grandfather. Now, everywhere I go, anywhere I am, whether I'm driving down the road or walking, I'm always looking at the plants. The spark was created here, and Dr. Betz helped nurture it and fan it with his knowledge."

— Mari Coyne