Lester Touby Kurtz

 (1914-2011)

Lester was a favorite cousin of the Touby girls.  His mother, Alice Leora Touby, "Aunt Allie," married John Harley Kurtz.  They had three children, Dorothy Jennette, Lester Touby and Geneva Agnes.  Jennette was a school teacher and was Virginia's teacher one year.  (I can't imagine having a cousin as a teacher!)  My mother remembers how much fun it was when she and her sisters got together with their cousins.
 

Lester, Jennette and Agnes

Lester graduated from Howard Township High School and then from Purdue University.  He married Frances Sinnamon in 1940 and made their home in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where he had begun as a graduate assistant in the Department of Agronomy in 1938.  He completed his PhD in 1943 and was made full professor in 1951.  Lester was known by his middle name "Touby" among colleagues and friends.  Most of his career was in research on soil-plant fertilizer interactions.  Among his contemporary soil scientists, he was best known as co-originator with Roger Bray of the "P-1" test.  This test became the accepted rapid chemical procedure in soil testing laboratories of the North Central Region of the US and is still widely used in many areas.  

He was a Guggenheim Fellow with the USDA, a Senior Fullbright Fellow in Australia and a Lady Davis Fellow at the Israeli Institute of Technology, and in addition worked with the Tenessee Valley Authority, USAID in Sierra Leone, and advised and taught in the People's Republic of China.  He retired from U of I in 1982 after a long and distinguished career.  

Lester and Frances