After decades of helping farmers yield better fruit, Dr. Webster Allen Chandler Jr. tested some of his research in an orchard of his own.
A year before retirement, he started cultivating a 6-acre tract, mostly peaches, in Orchard Hill near Griffin, where he lived. He sprayed, pruned and picked his yield and, weather permitting, harvested bushels. The scientist-turned-farmer became known as "Mr. Peach" around town.
"They were better than what you could buy in a store," said Barbara Antley, a daughter from Atlanta. "My brother has a peach orchard, and I'm a master gardener. We've got the plant gene going in the family."
Dr. Chandler enjoyed stellar health and had never been hospitalized until May of last year. He died Saturday of congestive heart failure at home. He was 96. A funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday in the chapel of Griffin's Haisten McCullough Funeral Home.
Dr. Chandler spent five years in the Army and was stationed in Guam during World War II. After a 1946 honorable discharge, he joined the pathology department at Penn State University, where he earned his doctorate.
In 1955, he was hired as a scientist at one of the University of Georgia's agricultural experiment stations. His job: to improve crop yield and control diseases in fruit trees, notably peach crops of Middle Georgia. He retired in 1981.
As a farmer, this scientist grew apples, blueberries and peaches. He had eight to 10 varieties of peaches, about 600 trees, that would produce fruit every day during the season. He worked the land for 15 years, said Randall Allen Chandler, a son from Brooks.
"He applied what he learned to his own orchard," he said. "It was in full production by the time he retired from the station."
Dr. Chandler was born in Newton, Mass., and reared by an aunt and uncle because his parents died when he was young. He worked his way through college with odd jobs and earned a bachelor's degree in botany at Massachusetts State University and a master's degree in plant pathology from Cornell University, where he met Margaret "Peggy" Elizabeth Dole Chandler, his wife of 69 years.
The scientist was well known for volunteerism in Griffin and Spalding County, some 40 miles south of downtown Atlanta. He delivered meals to shut-ins for 35 years, doing so till he was 94. He logged thousands of hours at Spalding Regional Hospital and taught adults how to read. The Georgia Council on Aging recognized his contributions with its 2008 Positive Change Award.
"He wasn't one to preach to anybody," his son said. "He would do his own thing and let people follow his example."
His daughter thinks she knows what inspired the veteran's civic contributions.
"He was part of that greatest generation," she said. "When they came home from World War II, they wanted to have a family and give back."
Survivors besides his wife and children include five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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