When Richard, Tim and Steve Mizer reflected on their careers in medicine, engineering and the law, they found the seeds of success were planted more than a century ago by an ambitious farm boy, a college scholarship and the Coshocton County Farm Bureau.
The farm boy was grandfather Emerson Mizer, who’d dropped out of high school to support his family, but at age 20 longed to study agriculture at the college level so he could run his own farm.
The scholarship was for an education in agriculture at The Ohio State University, which Mizer used beginning in 1920.
Coshocton County Farm Bureau awarded the scholarship to Emerson, kicking off a career as a dairy farmer and dairy owner in Cadiz, Ohio, that was successful enough to support a large family that included Emerson’s oldest son, David — Richard, Tim and Steve’s father.
Now the brothers are paying it forward with a scholarship of their own, the David E. Mizer Memorial Scholarship, awarded for the first time this year through the Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation.
“We wanted to do something that honored Dad and also Grandpa, and I can imagine Dad saying that Grandpa was able to better himself with a scholarship from the Farm Bureau,” said Richard, the oldest son of David and Anna Mizer, and a retired family physician who practiced in Greenfield, Ohio. “Grandpa always wanted people to better themselves as he was able to do. Farming is really hard work, 365 days a year.”
The brothers grew up near their grandfather’s dairy farm in Harrison County, working beside him during summer breaks and after school. Eventually they learned how he’d gone to Ohio State on a scholarship and had paid his daily living expenses by delivering telegrams on his bicycle, washing team uniforms and working at a restaurant in exchange for meals. After he finished the three-year program, he took a job in Belmont County testing butterfat in milk on farms and eventually married a farmer’s daughter, Sylvia Giffin.
Despite the Great Depression, the couple bought what would become the family farm in Harrison County in 1931, and, with Emerson’s brother, Dennis, the Hillcrest Dairy, in Cadiz. They raised seven children, employed many people in Harrison County, and for a time, operated an ice cream parlor on their property.
David followed his father’s example and graduated from Ohio State with a degree in dairy technology before returning to work at Hillcrest Dairy and moving on to the United Dairy in Martins Ferry, Ohio.
Like his father, Emerson, who died in 1992 at the age of 91, David was active with Farm Bureau until his death at the age of 90 in 2023.
Tim Mizer, a mostly retired architectural engineer from Cadiz, said a college education and Farm Bureau were important to both his father and grandfather.
“I remember my grandfather saying to me when I was considering being a farmer that it didn’t make any difference what I ended up doing, but I should get a college degree first,” Tim said.
So, when the brothers gathered to decide what they could do to honor their father, they quickly concluded they wanted to do something for someone who would carry on in farming.
“The students we want to have this are mainly farm guys and gals,” Tim said. “Money’s tight, and we decided we wanted to help someone out.”
Farming, said David’s youngest son, Steve, was the most important thing to his father.
Steve Mizer, of Smyrna, Georgia, worked in Turner Broadcasting’s legal department and helped the brothers shape the scholarship, with advice from Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation.
“We hoped if we put up a $3,000 scholarship renewable for four years that more students would be interested,” he said.
One motivating factor was their father’s winning $20,500 bid on a farmhouse portrait during a 2019 Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation fundraising auction to celebrate Ohio Farm Bureau Federation’s Centennial. Some of that money funded scholarships, which motivated their father’s surprise bid.
“I didn’t have any idea Dad was even bidding on it,” Steve said. “We were proud that he did.”
A dozen or so students applied for the first David Mizer scholarship, which is awarded to a student seeking a degree in dairy science, food science, agriculture or a related field. Recipients are chosen based on their work ethic, academic effort, civic engagement and a career that contributes to the future of Ohio agriculture.
The inaugural recipient was Shane Griffith of Jefferson County, who is attending Ohio State at the Wooster campus and plans to be the sixth generation to operate his family’s farm.
“In my mind, the scholarship honors both my grandfather and my dad,” Richard said. “It’s a farm family traditional thing – passing one thing down to another.”
Feature photo caption: Anna and David Mizer, left, with their sons Richard, Tim and Steve Mizer at the unveiling of a commemorative painting David Mizer bid on and won at the Ohio Farm Bureau Centennial celebration in 2019. Proceeds benefited the Ohio Farm Bureau Foundation.
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