Cattle Farmers Leave Millions Behind

Frugal Farmers Ish and Arlene Hatch left behind a secret fortune and enriched their community forever.

A year ago August, Dave Fuss lost his job driving a dump truck for a small excavation company in west Michigan. Dave and his wife, Gerrie, lived in Alto-a small community (population: 8,694) only 20 miles outside Grand Rapids that even now is more small town than suburb.

Gerrie was still working in the local grade school cafeteria, but work for Dave was scarce, and the price of everything was rising. The Fusses were at risk of joining the millions of Americans who have lost their homes in recent years. Then Dave and Gerrie received a timely gift--$7,000, a legacy from their neighbors Ish and Arlene Hatch. "It really made a difference when we were going under financially," says Dave.



Dave had plowed the Hatches' driveway in the winter and in the summer sat listening to Ish's stories about farming in the old days; still, he had no reason to expect that the Hatches would leave him or Gerrie anything but memories after they died. But the Fusses weren't the only folks in Alto and the neighboring town of Lowell to receive unexpected bequests from the Hatches. There were the Van Weeldens, the Vander Ziels, Jim and Norma Peterson, Dave Fuss's parents, Paul and Lois, and his brother Jerry--dozens of families were touched by the Hatches' generosity. In some cases, it was a few thousand dollars; in others, it was more than $100,000.

It surprised nearly everyone that the Hatches had so much money, more than $3 million-they were an elderly couple who lived in an old house on what was left of the family farm--but no one was surprised by what they did with it. "Money isn't what drove Ish and Arlene," says their friend Steve Vander Ziel, who spent many evenings with his wife, Joan, chatting with the Hatches on their back porch. "This is small-town America, neighbors helping neighbors."

Neighbors helping neighbors-that was Ish and Arlene Hatch's story, in death as in life.

For years after he retired from raising polled Herefords-beef cattle-on his farm in Lowell, Willis "Ish" Hatch spent the harvest riding alongside Steve Vander Ziel in the cab of his combine. They might talk about world events or the price of grain, but often they talked about their town-about families stretching to make house payments or meet medical bills, pay for college, or simply buy groceries. At sundown, Ish would clamber down from the combine and walk back home, full of neighborhood news for his wife, Arlene.

Arlene had deep roots in Kent County, Michigan. Her father, Allen Behler, once owned the same land Ish Hatch later farmed. Allen bought and sold property in town, owned the stockyards, and served as justice of the peace. "You know, it was an age in which people were kinda like entrepreneurs," says Arlene Hatch's 67-year-old niece, Quenda Story, remembering her grandfather. "He did everything."

Ish, by contrast, was something of a newcomer to the area. A veteran of World War II, he was still living with his parents in Macy, Indiana, when he first encountered Arlene, who was teaching school there. "He grew up in hard times," says Quenda. "The whole family worked as farmhands, and there wasn't enough food." Ish would later marvel in his letters home during the war at the abundance of food in Army mess halls.

Ish met Arlene on a blind date that almost ended before it began. A violent storm kicked up the night they were to meet, and Ish, watching the rain lash against the window and the trees bend in the wind, told his sister, "I'm not going."

"You are going," his sister replied, and she sent him on his way.

Ish never regretted it. Nearly six decades later, Ish and Arlene still held hands wherever they went.

After their marriage, Ish and Arlene moved to Lowell. There they lived in the 1853 clapboard farmhouse where Arlene had been born. Ish farmed the surrounding 300 acres, while Arlene taught English and math at the junior high school. Ish collected "gimme" caps-in time more than 150 of them-which he got from local businesses and hung on a wall in the house. Arlene planted four-o'clocks and baked rhubarb pies. There were firehouse breakfasts, Bible studies, craft clubs. At Christmas, Ish hung a lighted star from the silo that could be seen all the way from Interstate 96, nearly a mile north of the farm.

Through the years, the Hatches discreetly paid for local children to attend summer camp when their parents couldn't afford it, and they made certain no child went without warm clothing when winter came to the farmlands south of the Grand River. Fans of the Michigan State Spartans, the Hatches often took some of the local high school boys to football games in East Lansing, about 50 miles away. "Ish and Arlene never asked if you needed anything," says their friend Sandy Van Weelden, 72. "They could see things they could do to make you happier, and they would do them."

Children of the Great Depression, Ish and Arlene were known for their thrift. They thrived on comparison shopping and would routinely go from store to store, checking prices before making a new purchase. "One time they traveled all the way to South Carolina to purchase a pair of easy chairs because they learned the cheapest price was from the manufacturer there," recalls Quenda Story. Nevertheless, she says, "they had a comfortable home."

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