“Bury Derry Day” was a day of mixed emotions for family, friends and fans who attended his funeral and celebration of life Wednesday in California, Missouri. There were many tears, but I would say that most of them were tears of laughter remembering Derry Brownfield’s life. I have not laughed so hard in a long time listening to his oldest son Jay (who looks just like him!) relate stories about Derry through the years.
Missourinet news director Bob Priddy, who knew Derry for over 40 years, did the eulogy at the funeral, concentrating on Derry’s early years in radio at KLIK in Jefferson City where they worked together. One especially entertaining story was about a practical joke that fellow news guys at KLIK played on Derry. One day on the air, Derry had taken to task the Secretary of Agriculture at the time over something he had done or said that Derry disagreed with. A couple of the KLIK guys decided to have some fun by tampering with the UPI newswire in the news room, taking some of the continuous feed paper and typing up a bogus story saying that the ag secretary was upset over the critical comments made by a “certain Midwest farm broadcaster.” Derry came in the next morning, went through the wire copy, found the story and felt he should report it and respond to it during his next broadcast. The jokers didn’t tell him the truth until he was just about ready to go on the air with it. Not often that Derry was had – but that was funny!
Listen to Bob Priddy’s eulogy to Derry here: Derry Brownfield Eulogy
It is so appropriate that Derry’s life was celebrated this week during National Agriculture Week, since he spent his life speaking as a farmer, to the farmer, for the farmer, from the farm. Congressman Rick Crawford (R-AR) even devoted a moment on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to remember Derry. “His vision and passion for informing and educating rural America was unparalleled and an inspiration to the farmers and farm broadcasters he influenced,” Crawford said. “We can take what Derry taught us and honor his legacy by continuing the tradition of quality agricultural reporting.”
Watch it here:
The Chairman of the 
At the National Ag Day dinner in Washington, DC our keynote speaker was USDA Under Secretary Michael Scuse. He welcomed us to this day of celebration.
We’ve got youth in agriculture here at National Ag Day from just about every organization you can think of including the FFA. Introducing our lunch speaker today was Victor Salazar, Connecticut FFA state president. He was introduced by Orion Samuelson and I’m thinking that alone made an impression on him. But then it was his turn to do the introduction and he did an awesome job. I’ve got his intro on the audio file you can listen to below.
U.S. Representative Frank Lucas (R-OK), Chairman of the 
The man with the voice no one will forget, Orion Samuelson, WGN, emceed the National Ag Day Mix & Mingle Luncheon today. I spoke with Orion before the program got started to get his thoughts on Ag Day and learn what we’ll be doing this celebrate American agriculture day.
The official obituary has been