Rod Searle

Rodney Newell "Rod" Searle, Sr. (July 17, 1920 – January 5, 2014) was a Minnesota farmer, insurance agent, and public servant. Born and raised in urban New Jersey, Searle moved to rural Minnesota in 1947 with his wife Jane and their two young children. With no prior experience in agriculture, they moved to a farm, and soon were raising crops and livestock. He also became heavily involved in community activities.

Searle was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1956, and spent 24 years as a legislator, and had a particular emphasis in education. In 1979 he was selected by an evenly divided body as Speaker. Searle retired from the legislature after the 1980 session but continued in public service, serving in a variety of public and private volunteer positions for the remainder of his life. He died at his home on January 5, 2014.

Rod Searle was born July 17, 1920, in Camden, New Jersey to Ruby Marie Barus Searle, a nurse, and newspaper editor William A. Searle. He recalled seeing Babe Ruth hit a home run at Shibe Park in nearby Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Searle graduated from Haddonfield high school in Haddonfield, New Jersey. During World War II he worked for Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, New Jersey and went to night classes at Rutgers University.

Searle married Janette (Jane) E. Christie on May 17, 1941. In 1946 they began considering relocating from the industrial East to the rural Midwest. Eight months later, in April 1947, the Searles and their two small children made the move, which Searle later characterized as "nearly traumatic at the time", but "turned out to be the biggest and wisest decision of our lives".

They began farming 280 acres of run-down land in rural Waseca County, Minnesota in partnership with Robert Christie III, his brother-in-law, in a career for which they were neither trained nor educated. They obtained advice from the agricultural Experiment Station at Waseca, a branch of the University of Minnesota Waseca, the county extension agent, and neighbors. They grew crops, tended a small dairy herd, and raised sheep and chickens.

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