FACULTY MEMBER, FARMER, FRIEND 

Longtime ISU Professor Brockman Never Strayed From His Farming Roots

 By Tom Emery

             

Dr. Herman Brockman was many things to many people. Being a farmer was near the top of the list.

Brockman was a longtime faculty member in genetics at Illinois State University, earning an array of teaching honors in a 35-year career.

He also participated in research funded by such agencies as the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control.

In 1982, he was named a Distinguished Professor at Illinois State, and was honored with the university’s Outstanding Teacher Award in 1998.

But of his many lifetime achievements, Brockman was proudest of receiving the Future Farmers of America (FFA) Star State Farmer Award at age seventeen in 1951.

Despite his enormous influence on generations of ISU students, he never strayed from his agricultural roots. A native of Danforth, Ill., Brockman was born in 1934 in the family farmhouse, in the same room where his father was also born.

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He soon developed an appreciation of farming that would never leave him. Brockman later wrote that “I loved being a farm boy and helping Dad in all the farm activities I could do at any given age. And I loved learning from Mother to notice and love the natural world.”

As a youth, Brockman spent the first six years of his education in a one-room schoolhouse. There, he read every book on nature that he could find in the bookmobile that served his home area. He later was a member of the local 4-H Club, and was in the FFA at Gilman High School.

A 1956 graduate of Blackburn College, Brockman earned an M.S. from Northwestern University in 1957 and a Ph.D. from Florida State in 1960. He married his wife, Marlene, in September 1956, a union that produced six children and lasted until his death.

Dr. Brockman spent three years as a postdoctoral research fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory before being named to the faculty at Illinois State in 1963.

He spent thirty-five years at Normal, teaching on the undergraduate, master’s, and doctorate levels. A total of 13 Ph.D, 22 master’s and around 100 undergraduate students trained in Brockman’s laboratory, a mark not only of his excellence, but theirs as well.

A charter member of the Environmental Mutagen Society, Brockman published over sixty scholarly articles in his career.  In 2009, he was inducted into the university’s Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.

Upon his retirement, Dr. Brockman’s former students at Illinois State created an Alumni Symposium in his honor. Many of those students rave about the impact Brockman had on their professional and personal growth.

As his career progressed, Brockman returned deeper to his roots. He and Marlene purchased a wooded parcel near Congerville in Woodford County, along Walnut Creek. They moved there in the early 1970s and built a house along with an organic farm, complete with fruit trees, and a large vegetable garden.

The farm became renowned for both its serenity and its place as one of the premier organic agricultural operations in the state. Brockman remained there for the rest of his life.

He also kept writing. Among his favorite works was an essay collection, Trees I Have Known, in which he fondly recalled his childhood.

A lover of simple foods, he particularly enjoyed beer nuts, tapioca, chocolate ice cream, and root beer floats. He consented to several oral history interviews later in life, including a lengthy one for Illinois State.

Brockman survived a severe bout with pancreatic cancer in 2007, then lost his eyesight in 2019. His death on April 8 2025 was mourned not only by his large family, but also by his many friends at the university and across Illinois agriculture.

Indeed, few lived a life quite like Herman Brockman, a farm boy who went on to a superb career at Illinois State, then back to the farm once again.

                Tom Emery may be reached at 217-710-8392 or ilcivilwar@yahoo.com.