Bill Bivens:
CLASS OF 1961
Hastings High SchoolClass of 1961
Hastings, MI
Michigan State University - AgricultureClass of 1965
East lansing, MI
Bill's Story
I am very honored to have been selected as the 2015 Hastings High School Alumnus of the Year.
It seems a bit ironic that the year after receiving this honor the Hastings High School building we attended will be torn down. Memories will remain for most of use lucky enough to have attended there and to the good fortune to live to share those memories. Please share some of your memories and life experiences here in Classmates.
I sincerely hope the new school building will be equal to our school house 1907-2016.
After the 2007 update below I will post background information from my 2015 HHS Alumnus of the Year Award.
Please take time and share your information on your profile also.
The following is an article submitted for Barry County History Book 2007 update so it is in that style. But is does gives our background and information. Any questions or comments please drop me a note.
William and Nancy Bivens
William (Bill) and Nancy Cole Bivens grew up in Barry County graduating from Hastings High School (HHS) in 1961 and 1963. Their family ancestors include many of the early settlers of Southeast Barry County. On the Bivens side there were Swift, Guy, Bristol, Schoup and Ketcham with direct lineage to Bristol Corners, Bristol Inn and the Bivens, Swift and Guy county roads. Nancy J. Cole was raised on a general livestock and crop farm in Assyria Township near M-66 and Lacey Road. She was born 19 December 1944 in Battle Creek the daughter of Howard J. and Leona N. Cole. Her ancestors included Cole, Miller, Skidmore and Stanton. The Stanton family is traced back the 1600ÿs in the United States and has lineage to President, George Washington. Nancy has two older siblings, Steven J. Cole, b. 21 December 1942 and Norene Cole Fox, b. 20 December 1938. (The siblingÿs birthdays are 19, 20 and 21 of December). Bill was born in Battle Creek 30 August 1943, grew up on the family dairy farm on Hutchinson Road, Johnstown Township. Bill and Nancy still own portions of their familyÿs farmsteads and ownership in family property in Baltimore Township.
Bill and his younger sister Candace (Candy) were born to Paul E. Bivens and Fern ÿLeolaÿ Ketcham Earl Bivens. His three older brothers Laverne Bivens, Lewis Earl and Otis Earl were from his parentÿs first marriages. Additional dates and detail can be found in the Paul Bivens and Candace J. Bivens Daniels articles in this book. Bill attended the Stevens one room school through the sixth grade and the seventh and eighth grades at the Bullis School. Nancy attended the Assyria school until it burned down, then Bellevue through the tenth grade, transferring and graduating from Hastings High School. They were married 12 September 1964 prior to Billÿs senior year at Michigan State University. They lived in Battle Creek where Nancy worked as a receptionist at the Swansonÿs ÿArchway Cookie Company and Bill commuted to MSU. Bill was the first in his family to attend college receiving a BS in General Agriculture ÿ Dairy Production returning later to earn a Masters in Adult and Continuing Education.
After College Bill served two years as a US Army Infantry Officer which included a year in Viet Nam 1967-68. His assignment in DaNang Viet Nam was a Food and Agriculture Officer for the 29th Civil Affairs Company in the five northern provinces of Viet Nam. His role during that year was to survey the agricultural potential and provide assistance such that ÿwhen we won the warÿ Viet Nam could be quickly back on its feet producing and exporting agricultural products
After the US Army he was employed thirty four years by Michigan State University as an Agricultural Extension Agent in the Thumb area of Michigan and then in Jackson County, retiring in 2003.
In addition to proving care and guidance for her five children Nancy operated a child day care for twenty five years until she retired in 2003. All five of the Bivensÿ children have graduated from college and are working in the area of their educational training: Brenda Kay Bivens (Wesenberg), b. 20 April 1966, BS MSU working in Restaurant Management Detroit area; Gretta Marie Gibson Jones, b. 11 March 1968, an elementary teacher in Lansing with a BA and MA from MSU; William ÿBradleyÿ Bivens, b 03 August 1970, BS MSU, Medical Degree Wayne State University, Family Practice Doctor in Jackson; Jason Cole Bivens, b 23 March 1974, BS Grand Valley State University, Environmental Science, Public Sanitarian Jackson Health Department; Eric Ross Bivens, b. 22 January 1978, BS MSU, Building Construction Management, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
2015 Alumnus of the Year Hasting High School, Hastings Michigan
Hastings High School 1961 Graduate
William Manly Bivens
Born August 30, 1943
William (Bill) Bivens, completed a thirty six year public service career assisting others to succeed. He served in the US Army and retired from the Michigan State University Cooperative Extension Service. The first of his family to attend college graduating with a Bachelor of Science Degree from Michigan State University (MSU). At MSU he played freshman football and then earned an academic scholarship for his Junior and Senior Years. After college he served as a First Lieutenant in the US Army and was assigned to the Commanding Generalâs Headquarters in DaNang Vietnam. He served there with the 29th Civil Affairs Company as the âFood and Agriculture Officerâ for the five northern provinces of South Viet Nam After completing his Army service he was employed by Michigan State University and retired with the title Michigan State University Agricultural Extension Agent Emeritus. He also earn a Master of Arts Degree in Adult and Continuing Education from MSU. During the years of Billâs employment the MSU Agricultural Agent was a key informational and influential position in rural communities. Agents were both Federal and State University employees, paid by Land Grant Universities and supported by local counties all across the United States. Their role was the delivery of University knowledge and research to the communities they served and to assist in conveying community needs to decision makers and the Universities. Bill received numerous awards and recognition for his innovative and dedicated work. He received one the National County Agriculture Agents highest awards the âDistinguished Service to Agriculture Award at their national meeting in Billings, Montana and was given a Lifetime NCAA Membership at retirement. The Michigan Epsilon Sigma Phi (ESP), honorary fraternity of all Cooperative Extension Staff and Administrators selected him for the 2013 ESP Retiree Service Award awarded to retirees for their continued public service after retirement and had also given Bill a lifetime membership at retirement.
Billâs ancestors helped settle early Barry County. His county ancestors once lived near the site of the current Barry County Courthouse, were orphaned, pioneered farmland on Bivens Road south of Nashville, a Civil War Veteran, and his father, Paul Bivens âHomesteadedâ in the âWild Westâ near Gillette, Wyoming as child with his parents before returning to Barry County to fulfill his dream of owning his own farm. Paul also worked tirelessly during the consolidation of one room school districts encouraging them to join the Hastings District and then with the community to build the Pleasantview Elementary School and later became a beloved Hastings School bus driver for ten years.
Stepping up to help others started with a bang when as seventh grader, Bill stepped up to brake the head first fall of a schoolmate falling off the school roof likely saving his life. Billâs lifelong service to others may well have had it beginning in the care of the young livestock, while assisting his father to achieve his dream of farm ownership. There were many opportunities to take responsibility growing up on a dairy farm.
Formal education began for Bill when he joined a kindergarten class of one, at the Stevens one room school. That class grew to five by the eighth grade. Entering Hastings High School as a ninth grader could have been and was daunting. With the mentorship, assistants and leadership of professionals, Theodore (Ted) Knopf, 42 year biology and Vocational Agriculture Teacher, William (Bill) Kilpatrick, Michigan State University County 4-H Leader, Robert (Bob) King, YMCA Director and legendary coach and teacher John (Jock) Clary, Bill succeeded and graduated with 144 classmates in 1961. Bill received awards in 4-H and FFA for leadership, dairy, swine, and poultry and received the Hastings DeKalb Agriculture Outstanding High School Senior Award and was selected All Conference League Football Tackle his junior and senior years. But Billâs prize High School award was a plastic four inch tall trophy for his Intramural YMCA Basketball Championship Team. With no basketball experience until a freshman and then just open gym for noon hour, Thursday night community league at Pleasantview Elementary and a FFA member team in the intramural league that often had to play four against five because not enough farm kids could make it back in for the evening games it was a steep learning curve. After being cut as a junior trying to make the school basketball team winning the Intramural Championship as a senior football tackle playing point guard for his team (apparently mis-named) âThe Failuresâ was a sweet victory. To this day Bill thanks Y Director, Bob King and the teachers and administrators that allowed and made possible opportunities like this for student at Hastings High School to fully utilize the Community/Public School resources, get a high school education, gain confidence and leadership skills taught through Vocational Agriculture and the FFA program.
The choice to serve, to step up, to accept opportunities and help others find their way...Expand for more
to be successful became Billâs life. While in college the Vietnam War continued to grow. He choose to serve, someone was going to have to do it and with the ROTC program he could contribute as an officer. There was the draft but as it developed Bill likely would have not been drafted. He married Nancy Cole, (HHS 1963 graduate) before the start of his senior year and had their first child a couple of years later, which would have deferred him from the draft. Bill and Nancy honored his choice to serve. They moved to Ft Benning, Georgia where Bill was an Honor Graduate of the Infantry Officers Basic Course and was sent to California at Fort Ord in Monterey. Soon he had his orders to Vietnam and brought their daughter and Nancy, expecting their second child, back to Barry County. He then went to Jungle Survival School in Panama and on to Vietnam. His orders were to be a platoon leader in the Delta Region with the rice paddys of Southern South Vietnam. That is when good fortune stepped in. Someone had volunteered to take his assignment and the Army saw his degree in Agriculture reassigning him to the Food and Agricultural Officer position in DaNang. There his responsibility was to survey the agricultural capabilities and provide assistance such that âwhen we won the warâ the Vietnamese could renew their domestic production and become rice and agricultural exporters.
While in Vietnam (VN): He attended a 2 week rice production class for USAID employees at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and return with three large bags of I-R9 rice, a major new genetic development at that time. He set up four location for the growth, demonstration and multiplication of the seed supply in VN
He arranged with the Air Force to fly Bill to Saigon area where he had contacts with a modern swine farm and purchased 18 purebred Duroc and Landrace swine breeding stock. The pigs were then flown to six locations near 3-6 man teams the 29th Civil Affairs Company had located in the five northern provinces of VN.
He established a system of selected approved Vietnamese vendors to purchase vegetables from small local farmers and sell them to the military. The year after Bill left VN the Marine Sargent in charge of arranging the purchase of vegetable from the Vietnamese by the Navy whom were the food suppliers for that part of VN reported the purchase of $600,000 and that increased and continued until the US left VN.
When Bill left the Army he had an opportunity to work for Cargill a huge international grain and livestock feed company or Michigan State University. The choice was to return to Michigan and assist others through the Cooperative Extension System. For the next 34 years, first in the Thumb area and then located in Jackson County he counseled, taught, organized meeting, tours and events. He wrote newsletters, news releases, radio and TV programs and met and coordinated with MSU professor to assist farmers and to inform the public of Agricultural Issues of a Public Policy nature. In the process he helped develop non-profit groups, clubs and partnerships to benefit others.
Some of those group were:
The Great Lakes Grazing Network and Grazing Conference a five state coordinating team of coworker that fostered the utilization and documented results and environmental benefits from Intensive Rotational Grazing Management. Audio tapings of the seminars were made available to the 350 mid-west graziers attending and for those who could not attend when the Great Lakes Grazing Conference was held in Michigan at Battle Creek MaCamly Place Hotel.
The Jackson REAL Dairy Promotion Association that local dairy farmers learned firsthand the promotion of their products and industry. They were responsible for building an observation milking parlor with accompanying ice cream sales store that annually generates $10-15,000 for educational activities and support of 4-H youth.
In the Thumb area and in Jackson Dairy Farmers groups learn more about genetics and improved their dairy herds by forming a partnership to produce and select one to three elite bull calves a year that they could collectively raise. After investing five years in the genetically sampling of these selected bulls by measuring the superiority of the bulls milking daughters while maintaining housing and care for what grew into large and dangerous mature dairy bulls, they offered them to the Artificial Insemination Industry for use around the world. Only a small number of highly selected bulls are needed yet during the time these partnerships worked together they sold or leased four bulls, influencing the dairy genetics and sharing over a million dollars between them.
Bill and his wife Nancy have been married 50 years and have five children, all of them graduating from college are married and working in the area of their study. Bill also served as a director on the South East Greenstone Farm Credit Board and was President of the Northwest Athletic Booster during the time his kids were in high school. After retiring he was on the Tompkins Township Planning Board and remained active in the Jackson Agriculture Council and their annual FarmFest Event.
Bill and Nancy have returned to live in Barry County and are in the Hastings School District once again. Bill now spends time with areas of his personal interest including agriculture, archery hunting and white tail deer. He is a board member of the Barry County Quality Deer Management Association a County Farm Bureau member and belongs to the national Pope and Young Association which supports ethical bow hunting. Each year their large garden increases the percentage of flowers vs vegetables shifting to perineal flowers as well. They are enjoy watching their twelve grand children grow and develop. Bill and Nancy attend Pleasantview Family Church in their local community.
Additional details and background information
(The following paragraphs capture some time periods adding more detail or events that just seemed important to put to paper. Some but not all are summarized in the personal biography. What is missing are many special and rewarding experience including Bill and Nancyâs meeting, 50 years of marriage and wonderful experiences together and their five children. Hopefully undertaking this exercise with give Bill the impetus to continue and put more of his, Nancy and their childrenâs lives to paper capturing it for others.)
Born to the parents Paul and Leola Bivens on August 30, 1943 Bill was the first child for this marriage. He was born into a blended family with three older brothers. The brothers Laverne Bivens, Lewis Earl and Otis Earl who were eleven to seventeen years older and were also Hastings High School graduates as was Billâs sister, Candy (Candace) Bivens Daniels, who was seven years younger. The family lived at 12320 Hutchinson Road on a dairy farm that had its west border on the east shore of Long Lake in Johnston Township.
Billâs life started with ties to the past of his family, Barry County and Hastings. His given name, William Manly Bivens was a combination of his Grandfathers names William (Ross) Bivens and Byron Manly Ketcham. Ross Bivens father and grandfather were also William Bivens, one a Civil War Veteran and the other a Barry County pioneering family. The Bivens family at one time lived on the site of the current Barry County Court House and pioneered a farm south of Nashville for which Bivens Road is named. The earlier William Bivens men married their wives from the Guy and Swift families, early Barry County residence for whom county roads are also named. The Ketcham side has ties to the Bristol family, hence Bristol Lake, Bristol Corners and School and the Bristol Inn now relocated to Charlton Park village. His grandfather Ketcham was a successful farmer on Butler Rd in Baltimore Township and his Uncle Otis owned the Lacey Store and was a long time mailman for Lacey/Dowling and his Aunt Agnes a one room school teacher in the county. His great great grandfather moved into early Barry County from Maryland and when his wife became ill he and his oldest son took her back to her family in Maryland. The four youngest children were left in Michigan. They were orphaned here when their mother died in Maryland and their father did not return.
With all this grounding in Barry County Bill was apparently anxious to get started stepping up to his future. Although for the first few days of his life he wasnât Bill Bivens but was called âHarley Davisonâ. At least that was what it was reported that the nurses at Battle Creek Community Hospital called him. Billâs father had helped his older brothers purchase a motor cycle to ride to Hastings High School and work. After buying the motorcycle and driving it home, he convinced his then eight month pregnant wife to ride slowly around the yard with him. Driving slowly with a bike is not easy let alone with a temporally over balanced rider. The bike tipped over rolling the mother to be âgentlyâ onto the lawn. Being born the next morning, a month early didnât slow Bill down. When the nurses would reach down to pick him up he would reach up and grab a hold of their fingers like they were the handle bars of a âHarley Davisonâ motorcycle. Knowing the story behind the early delivery the nurses delighted in calling him âHarley Davidsonâ! Bill never did own a motorcycle unlike his brothers and his sister who did. Maybe the one ride was enough.
Billâs parents Paul and Leola were positive and supportive. Both of them overcame hardships, worked hard, and achieved success because of their efforts. Many of the things they experienced were historical for our county and character building for Bill and his family. Barely out of their teens they lived through the Great Depression. Paulâs parents left Barry County as âHomesteaderâ near Gillette Wyoming .
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