By Leland and Martha Atkins, Marisa Mata and Esra Hashem
In 1943, with the United States fully engaged in World War II, Martha (Hood) Atkins (1945) saw a lot of her friends getting wrapped up in romantic relationships, but she, a sophomore in college, was focused on her schooling— wanting to graduate and get a job so she could support herself. Leland Atkins (1943), patient and persistent with Martha, finally got a date with her during the winter break of his senior year.
Martha and some friends were working in a lab on campus when Leland walked in and started asking them to go ice-skating with him. Time after time, his invitation was rejected, and then he stopped in front of Martha. With some nervousness, Leland looked at her and said, “You’ll go.”
“I might,” was Martha’s reply.
The two went to the ice rink not knowing the long-term results of the date — their marriage and family as well as their mutual love for science leading them to found and maintain Atkins Farmlab for 47 years.
Before Leland’s passing in 2009, he and Martha took some time to document their journey, using a typewriter, from Fresno State to their retirement. Martha decided to share their story with us. Here it is, in their own words.
Martha:
How did it all begin? For me, it was my parents’ interest in the world and beyond, with Popular Science Magazines always at hand.
A fourth grade teacher’s blackboard sketch of a volcano awakened my interest in geological and mineralogical features of vacation trips. We saw Crater Lake and its porous pumice, “milky” glacier water from Mt. Rainer, Columbia and Snake Rivers’ massive basalt layers, limestone caves, beach agates, and magnetic iron oxide bits nearer home.
At Fresno State in the fall of 1941, a semester of Chemistry 1-A with Dr. Robert Du Bois convinced me to major in chemistry. Before the semester ended, The Pearl Harbor attack and our entrance into World War II led to military enlistments of many students.
Leland:
I was born and raised in Fresno. When I was 13, we moved to an 80 acre grape ranch south of Fresno where, during my school years, my work experiences — planting, plowing, irrigating, harvesting, and getting raisins and grapes to market — led me to an agriculture-related career many years later.
In high school my interest in science began with chemistry and biology, and continued through college with chemistry and physics majors.
Other classes were taken at Huntington Lake in the summers of 1939 and 1940 in the high Sierras, where Fresno State had their summer school program. One summer, I was employed by the United States Engineering Department.
I had a small laboratory at Hammer Field airport, which contained equipment to analyze core samples taken from runway in surrounding towns near Visalia and Livermore. We measured density, bitumen content, and included sieve analysis to determine if the runway was strong enough to support military aircraft.
Martha:
In September 1942, I was the only female chemistry major in our Quantitative Analysis class. It was a congenial group where I felt no discrimination.
We used free-swing analytical balances, plus a hand-cranked calculator, slide rules, or logarithm tables for calculating. We worked, usually, until the old McLane Hall closed at 6 p.m.
Senior chemistry majors, Andy, George and Leland, sometimes came to see how we were faring. Leland came most often.
Leland:
When I graduated in 1943, in the middle of World War II, most of my classes were small because many students had left for the military service. I obtained a position in the physics department of Shell Development Company in Emeryville, California. I was deferred from the draft since my job was classified as a vital war related project, which consisted of development of synthetic rubber from petro-chemicals.
Martha:
Fresno State wartime enrollment had dropped to about one-third of its pre-war level. I remember a math class of four girls, three of whom composed a physics class. One fellow and I shared a chemistry class, and I, alone, glassblowing. June 1945 graduation ceremonies on the East Lawn celebrated a class of 124.
Several weeks after an interview, and shortly after the end of the war, I received notice of acceptance as a Junior Chemist in the Physico-Chemical-Analytical Division of the USDA Western Regional Research Laboratory in Albany, California.
That fall, we attended an assembly of a few hundred chemists, physicists and others who were forming the Northern California Association of Scientists to influence Congress to place atomic energy matters in civilian rather than military hands. This effort resulted in the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission.
In May 1946, we were married in Fresno, and after renting in Oakland, purchased a lot in Orinda and made plans for building a home there. Many weekends and vacation hours were spent on the project.
Leland:
In the last several years with Shell, my work involved instrument development along with oversight of the surface-area work in the analytical department.
Martha:
Late in June 1949, I phoned my supervisor that I was not coming to work; I was going to the hospital. Many hours later we welcomed a wee son, and I resigned from my job at the lab.
Sometimes, as housebuilding continued, I went to building supply stores with a baby in arms. We moved into our unfinished house in 1950 and continued to sand, paint, etc. as needed. Meanwhile, I wondered if I would ever be involved with lab work again.
A daughter was born in 1951, and our second son in 1954.
After 18 years with Shell Development Company, Leland’s interest turned to agricultural chemical analyses. In June 1961, with our three children, and a moving van with some work benches and lab equipment, we arrived at our recently built home and laboratory facility in the Chico area, surrounded by nut orchards and other agriculture.
Our early months were spent acquiring equipment and becoming familiar with appropriate analytical methods. Some of the most frequently used ones were co-authored by the U.C. Davis Agricultural Extension Service Laboratory Director, our friend, and 1947 Fresno State graduate, James Quick. Thus began Atkins Farmlab.
A second daughter was born in 1963.
Plant tissue analysis for fertilizer requirements was somewhat new to some growers, and business was quite slow at first. For some supplemental income, Leland did some work at the USDA Plant Introduction Station in Chico, and [I] corrected papers for a couple of schools. A couple of semesters we served as substitute chemistry lab instructors at Chico State College.
In 1964 we joined the California Association of Agricultural Laboratories. Our business grew through the years, and each summer involved long days of leaf analyses.
Occasionally, a college class visited our facility.
It was not our goal to become a large operation. Two summers we hired another chemist for a few hours a week. Family members helped as they were able.
Life was not all work and no play. We included Boy Scouts (as Scoutmaster), Barbershop Harmony chorus, church choir, skiing, square dancing, sailing and some memorable trips in slack seasons. In 1995 we were at [my] 50 year graduation celebration.
Now, after a combined total of 22 years working for others and over 47 years of self-employment, we have sold our business and retired with a bit of sadness, but happy to have been useful in the vital fields of chemistry and agriculture. Thanks, in part to Fresno State, our dream came true!!!
