TIME WELL SPENT

Senator Charles Grassley reflects on careers in farming and government.

- Lisa Foust Prater

Charles Grassley has served in Washington, D.C., for more than half of his 90 years, and he still works to stay close to his roots on the family farm in Butler County, Iowa, northeast of Des Moines.

“Dad bought the farm I was born on in 1926, moved there in 1927, and farmed the 80 acres his entire life,” Grassley told me in an interview in his Washington, D.C., office. “At one time, he could have bought 80 acres north of us for $25 an acre, but he didn’t do it because during the Depression, they had a hard time making the payments to keep the 80 acres, but they made it.”

An inspirational upbringing

Grassley says his parents, Louis and Ruth, had a keen interest in civics. “Both of them were always talking about government and politicians and history in our household,” he says. “Growing up, I was either going to be a government teacher or in politics.” 

Ruth Grassley was one of the first four women in Iowa to cast a vote following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, but Grassley didn’t know about her role in history until a constituent from Iowa shared a newspaper clipping from the August 30, 1920, issue of the Des Moines Register with him after she had passed away. 

“I wonder why she never talked about it,” he says. “I think that was at a school election, and that had to be within 24 hours after Tennessee ratified it.”