For most people in the Cougar community, WSU is a part of life. For Earl Stuckel, WSU was a way of life.
Stuckel, a WSU-Prosser farm operations supervisor, retired in March after serving WSU for 54 years, the longest employee work record of any classified staff currently with WSU.
He was hired in 1951, along with his father and two brothers, at the WSU-Prosser Irrigation Experiment Station. Hired as farm and maintenance staff, the 17-year-old Stuckel worked as a time-slip employee.
Though young, his abilities were quickly recognized. After he was handed a rafter square during a building construction project, Stuckel took the instruction book home to study and returned with the ability to lay out and cut roof rafters and trusses.
Four years later, Stuckel was offered a full-time farm laborer I position.
“He comes from that old school of hard work,” said Randy Fox, a construction and maintenance mechanic lead at Prosser and former colleague of Stuckel. “He’s not afraid to get out and help.”
Lack of fear led Stuckel to do jobs many others would never touch.
When transporting and relocating surplus buildings from Hanford to Prosser, Stuckel often had to crawl under the rattlesnake-ridden buildings to make adjustments for transportation, keeping one eye on his work and the other eye out for snakes.
“I’ve done it all,” Stuckel said. “It was a way of life and I enjoyed what I did.”
It was this kind of fearlessness, drive and determination that distinguished Stuckel and enabled him to move up the ranks.
In 1959, Stuckel was promoted to senior farm laborer and then to farm foreman in 1963. The foreman position required him to transfer to the Columbia Basin Research Unit Two at Royal Slope and oversee the research farm, maintain the grounds and equipment, repair buildings and track all research and farm activity.
His final promotion was in 1984, when he became farm operations supervisor and, due to a manager retirement and staff reduction, oversaw both the Royal Slope unit and the Columbia Basin Research Unit One at Othello.
The job required the skills and abilities to manage a modern irrigated farming operation and the time commitment of working seven days a week from March through October. Stuckel was up to the challenge.
In addition to his crop and farming knowledge, Stuckel also became known for his ability to fix nearly any machine, saving WSU substantial money over the years.
“He’s a wealth of knowledge,” Fox said. “We always tell him he should write a book.”
Robert Ponti, a former WSU-Prosser manager, said Stuckel was a role model and asset to anyone he worked with.
“He has educated more young Ph.D.s than anyone else in the university,” Ponti said.
Stuckel’s accomplishments were honored in 2002, when he received the O.A. Vogel Crop Improvement Award, and again in 2003, when he was nominated for the CAHE Employee Excellence Award for classified technical staff.
In fall 2004, Stuckel decided his 73-year-old body was “gettin’ too old” for the hard labor of farm work. Though looking forward to pursuing travel and getting a license to go halibut fishing in Alaska, Stuckel misses the relationships he formed over so many years.
“I miss the camaraderie and working with researchers from Prosser and Pullman,” Stuckel said.
Though excited to embark on a new chapter in life, Stuckel is content with the years he spent at WSU and the legacy he has left.
“It’s hard for me to talk about my past because it doesn’t mean much,” Stuckel said. “It’s just me living my life. But I feel pretty good about what I’ve accomplished.”
