Carver and Wallace

This marker honors an unlikely friendship that began with a small boy and a botany student walking the fields around Ames.

The student was George Washington Carver, born into slavery, who came to Iowa State College and studied under a professor named Henry Cantwell Wallace. The professor's young son, Henry Agard Wallace, was only six when Carver started taking him on plant-collecting walks through the meadows, teaching him to see the science hidden in a field.

That boy grew up to breed hybrid seed corn, found a seed empire, serve as Secretary of Agriculture, and become Vice President of the United States under Franklin Roosevelt. He credited Carver with sparking his lifelong love of plants. Two men who met in Iowa, decades apart in age, whose walks together helped feed a nation.