Farmers Share Journey of Help, Hope

(IllinoisFarmerToday) –  Corn and soybean farming in eastern Illinois initially brought Todd Shively and Bill Watts together as friends. Later, an entirely different experience in Texas made their friendship even stronger.

Late last summer, Bill Watts was the center of a farm community coming together. Eight volunteer farmers in eastern Illinois, who had planted his crops in the spring as he fought cancer, gathered together on Aug. 25. On that day Watts was in Texas for surgery.

His friends met, sending their thoughts and prayers as they talked about how they could potentially help him at fall harvest.

It turned out that Watts, with successful surgery and cancer treatment, could harvest his own fall crops, and he is on the verge of planting his spring corn and soybeans now.

His friend and neighbor, Dean Blackford of Rankin, arranged the planting season volunteers. He organized farmers, as young as 17 and as old as 80, to plant the crops.

“I chose people I knew would help and take good care of the land,” Blackford said.

“It couldn’t have gone better. I never lost a minute of sleep over it,” Watts said.

Shively is impressed how well planting went last spring.

“Every guy worked like it was his own land. Some of Bill’s land is ornery,” Shively said.

The 840 acres couldn’t all be planted at the same time or the same way since conditions vary in Vermillion and Iroquois counties, where Watts farms.

Shively remembers talking with one farmer who was concerned about emergence and was considering re-planting a field of soybeans. The farmer and Shively, after much field-walking and discussion, decided not to replant.

“In the end that field ended up being my best field,” said Watts, who harvested the highest yields in his career last fall.

Watts first got interested in farming as a youngster when he visited his grandparents’ farm. Farming skipped his father’s generation, but the love of agriculture is alive and well for him as he looks forward to spring planting.

On April 10, he said, “I got the field cultivator out yesterday.”

That Watts is ready to plant his own crops this year is really a miracle on all counts. He was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer on Dec. 11, 2015. He was told that he had four to six months to live without treatment and one to one-and-a-half years with treatment. That’s more than 16 months ago, and Watts is healthy and going strong.

After diagnosis, he was put in a trial treatment with 34 people at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

“Out of 34, he was the only one who responded to the treatment. It was nothing short of a miracle,” Shively said.

Watts continues to get checkups and treatment in Texas. There, his path and Shively’s crossed again.

At the time of Watts’ surgery in August, Shively was aware he had one type of slow-moving cancer, but was later diagnosed with a more aggressive type which required quick and intense treatment. In February of this year, he received a stem cell transplant followed by intensive chemo.

By chance, it turned out that his treatment was also at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston — where both families continue to support each other during treatments and follow-ups visits.

“Being that far from home and having someone to relate to meant so much,” Shively said.

The men and their wives, Rhonda Watts and Stephanie Shively, played “a lot of cards” and talked for hours.

Both men described how thankful they are for their wives, noting it was their main job to survive.

“That’s your job for a while,” Watts said.

Their wives had to keep the rest of their lives going by doing chores they usually shared.

The Shively’s 18-year-old daughter has special needs. Both Todd’s and Rhonda’s parents helped care for her during the couple’s long stay in Houston.

“We were only home 23 days in four months. They watched over our daughter and our home,” he said.

Shively’s 200 acres of crops are custom farmed and he also takes care of some test plots, but his primary focus is on his Pioneer seed business, NextGen Ag Service in Buckley, where Watts is a customer.

Shively has equipment and offers other seed and crop related services from a large warehouse that is busy this time of year. He said he wouldn’t have been able to keep his business going without the help of his business partner Brian Dippel.

“If I hadn’t had him, I don’t know how I’d have made it through,” he said.

The community support is also incredible, he said. Some people helped with monetary support during his treatment so far away, others put up field signs, and there were lots of prayers for both men, Shively said. He recalls getting some equipment repaired by Ralph DeNault, an independent mechanic in Roberts, who did the work then parked the repaired equipment in Shively’s shed.

“All kinds of stuff like that happened,” he said.

“We’ve both had incredible support from the community,” said Watts. “We’ve been overwhelmed with people’s kindness.”