I had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Krull when he was named Citizen of the Year. He was a fine gentleman.
A Rome City resident since the summer of 1930, a long-time Lions Club member, an active church member and a family-oriented man, Gerhard Krull is being honored for his years of dedication to his community. As Citizen of the Year, he will serve as Grand Marshal of Chautauqua Days in August.

He worked for over four decades at one place – Kneipp Springs – and he has been retired for 27 years now. Well . . . retired just means he no longer has a formal job. Trim and fit at 92, he is a gentleman who bridges both the old and new worlds – literally and figuratively.

He was born in Germany, got his secondary education there, and then came to the United States in 1930 as a very young adult. In his career as farm manager at Kneipp Springs, he was always alert to new developments in agriculture, taking a course in veterinary science in Chicago and working with professors at Purdue University.

One of his projects has been to compile a scrapbook of his life, here and in Germany. One day, it occurred to him that he had one scrapbook, but six kids. So he had copies made and the man who did the work looked at him when he came to pick them up and said, “Mr. Krull, you sure had an interesting life.”

Gerhard Krull laughs as he tells the story, eyes twinkling. His memories come easily from him for he is a friendly, candid man, recalling humorous incidents – such as first meeting his wife, Eileen, while delivering sweet potatoes – with ready laughter . . . and later telling of his wife’s smile shortly before her passing with a catch in his throat.

He says, “We had 57 wonderful years together . . . and that smile is always with me.”

Gerhard Krull is from Lorup, a small town in Northern Germany near Holland. He lost his mother when he was 12 and was the younger son in a time when the oldest male heir inherited the family homestead.

Times were hard in Germany when he was in his teens and he looked to America as a place to improve his fortunes. An uncle was a priest in Ohio and that was where Gerhard first went when he arrived in 1930.

Learning English was his primary concern and he says, “I was only three days here with my uncle and I asked him to get a dictionary. And he got me one and I’ve still got that. No kidding.”

His uncle, Rev. Vigilius Hermann Krull, had started a Catholic school in his community and was at the time a well-known man in the Church, with connections at Kneipp Springs.

Gerhard came here for his first job . . . and stayed. He remembers, “I started out as a flunky. I couldn’t talk English . . . but (in the summer) they have a lot of school teachers and they like to talk German, so I learned quite a bit of English from them.”

He says, “English is not that easy to learn,” and tells a story of his first summer here. “We have a dining room where the young men eat and there were several fellows my age and they have sisters and right away they show me pictures. So I learn the word ‘picture’. So we are eating and somebody says, ‘Pass the pitcher,’ and, my gosh, I looked around . . .”

He grins and laughs and says, “There were two words that as far as I was concerned were the same, daggummit. I had quite a number of times like that. You folks don’t realize that. In German you pronounce every letter; in English, you choose the letters.”

While he studied English at night, it was his work during the day that earned him the trust of the staff at Kneipp Springs. He says, “By gosh, they asked me to take care of the garden.” He immediately began to make improvements. Where before three men had spaded grapes, he asked for a horse to pull a small plow and had the job done in an hour.

On a place near a road where only weeds seemed to thrive, he worked to start soup beans. He remembers the nuns walked by the spot regularly and once one said, “Gerhard, you can do what you want, but you’ll never get (the weeds) killed off.” But soon there were soup beans growing and he says, “They got a trust in me.”

He remembers, “I couldn’t talk much English, but I could think.” He laughs and adds, “Nobody could stop me from that.” On New Year’s Day in 1939, they asked him to be farm boss. He worried that he would be taking another man’s job . . . and hesitated. Later that day, he chanced to meet a priest who asked him about it and then said, “Gerhard, you look like you need some fatherly advice.”

The priest told him it would be a great opportunity and so when he returned to the office, he told them yes but inquired about the other man. They said not to worry, that fellow would have the job as park manager.
Gerhard Krull says he has been “so lucky” . . . that things have fallen in place for him. Maybe so, but all that thinking and working probably had a lot to do with his success.

He says he doesn’t really know why he was chosen citizen of the year. “I was so surprised,” he says and adds, “I was always active in the community. I helped the 4-H quite a bit.” He says that was easy for him, because “I love to help because I needed help. I love to be nice to people.”

His two younger sisters still call him frequently from Germany, to talk and seek his opinion. He has three sons – Dr. David and Jerry in Florida, Richard in South Milford; three daughters – Betty Olby of Fort Wayne, Mary Edwards and Barbara Tatman of Rome City. Raised in a religious home, he says he and his wife raised their children in the same atmosphere, He says, “I have a very great trust I tell you . . . don’t forget . . . in God.”