Anderson Gift Rooted in Ag
A $125,000 gift to Southeast Community College from Merlyn Anderson will extend the mission she built with her husband Dr. Charles Anderson. That mission is rooted in the belief that agriculture and the young people who practice it are worth investing in.
The gift was made through the Andersons’ trust, which dedicated $100,000 to the new Ag Tech Center in Beatrice, and $25,000 dedicated to scholarships for students in agriculture programs at SCC. The gift reflects the couple’s own life work: giving young people the tools and training to become great farmers.
The Andersons’ work spanned continents. Charles was a dentist in Beatrice when he was called to active duty in the U.S. Army and served in Korea. He founded Korea’s first 4-H club in 1947, and was often called the “father of modern Korean agriculture.” After the Korean War ended, he returned in 1954 to rebuild the Korean countryside and worked full-time on agricultural training, reforestation, livestock programs and rural development. By the early 1970s, Korea had the second largest 4-H membership in the world behind the United States with roughly 630,000 members.
Merlyn was a career librarian. She served as Beatrice City Librarian from 1918 to 1929, and was chairwoman of the library board from 1929 to 1941. After Charles’ death in 1973, Merlyn traveled to Korea, where she visited some of his projects and used memorial gifts given in his name to spread the 4-H program to other countries.
The facilities portion of the gift will support the new Ag Tech Center, a state-of-the-art facility that will house all agricultural programs at SCC and provide hands-on access to drone technology, precision agriculture labs and advanced simulation systems built for year-round instruction. The scholarship portion will continue the Andersons’ mission of spreading agriculture education for generations to come.