Ellen Hickman Williams created this endowed fellowship to honor her late father, Lawrence Earl Hickman (1911-2006), who had to take over management of the family farm in Onecho when his father, Roy, died suddenly four days after his high school graduation. Lawrence soon discovered the farm had “considerable indebtedness”. Lawrence’s original goal was to complete college and become a lawyer. He proceeded to do just that, graduating from the University of WA with a BA in 1934 and Law degree in 1936. All the while he was figuring out how to hold onto the farm, working all his vacations and taking one year off. He indeed saved the family farm. His grandfather, William Franklin & Martha Hickman, homesteaded the original 160 acres through the Homestead Act as a Civil War Veteran, bringing their sheep up from the Willamette Valley in Oregon on the Snake River. Through the years of trading, mortgaging for railroad land, and buying out siblings, the original homestead grew to 1200 acres, 830 acres farmable, the rest in pasture land and other uses. Lawrence describes his boyhood days as hiking the canyons along the breaks of the Snake River and developing an appreciation for the land and its history which lasted a lifetime. Eventually Lawrence and his mother, Pauline, leased to farm to family and it is in the 4th generation of family. Lawrence stayed involved and often put his legal skills to work on behalf of the farm and helping many farm families manage their own estates.
The recipients of this fellowship shall be involved in graduate research in one of the following areas as it relates to dry land farming systems: precision agriculture, crop rotations, climate change, soil health, technology to reduce fossil fuels, niche crop variety development for local processing, integrated pest/weed management using natural ecosystems, transporting systems for getting crops to market economically and the economics for transitioning farm operations to all the above.