Postcards: Virgil Getto, Part 2

I have two sources to credit for information about Fallon’s Virgil Getto. Chris Hansen wrote about Virgil in the Friday, July 6, 2007 edition of the “Fallon Star Press,” and Virgil himself left a detailed oral history, now housed at the Churchill County Museum and Archives, also available online at the Museum’s website.

Last week I introduced Virgil’s Italian immigrant parents, Andrew and Desolina Getto, Andrew having arrived in America in 1907 from Ivrea, Italy, and Desolina having arrived in America in 1923 from the same Italian village to join Andrew. Virgil’s admiration for his parents is woven into both stories.

Getto (via Hansen): “My dad became an expert at leveling land by sight with horses, tailboards, and fresnos. The fields were smaller then, but he spent many hours each day leveling fields. …My mom was a very ambitious lady. It wasn’t long before she had [at her home [1400 Lovelock Highway] a beautiful garden, 25 fruit trees along the river, a lawn, roses, chickens, pigs, and cows.”

Getto remembers how his early experiences on his parent’s Fallon farm shaped his own future.

Getto (oral history):  “I remember when I was really little like five and six years old. I’d sit in the house and cut [paper]. Mom’d give me old catalogs, and I’d cut my little animals out of the catalogs, and I’d make my farm. …And then, at six years old I started to milk cows. …while my folks milked eighteen others…. She [Desolina] was really good. She was a fantastic milker.”

Getto via Hansen: “My dad fixed up a sled with a fifty gallon barrel, which we filled with skim milk, potatoes, barley—what we called pig slop—and it was my job to get this to the pigs.”

Getto (oral history): “…oh, I was nine years old, I got into the 4-H program, so then I started raising cattle. And then with ag and FFA [Future Farmers of America} I had my beef projects, and I had registered Hampshire pigs that I raised and sold. And I used to raise a …do you know what a ton litter is? You know when the sow has one litter of pigs and by six months they have to weigh a ton, and I did that several times.”

Getto’s early introduction to raising livestock paid off when he reached Churchill County High School and entered the classroom of L.C. Schank.  Hansen quotes Getto as saying, “He had the most profound effect on my life, maybe even more than my parents…. He was the only ag teacher in the United States who had three national FFA officers from the same school: Verl Hendricks, me, and Don Travis.”

Getto served as national Secretary for FFA, 1945-46, and traveled to New York and Washington, D.C., where he met President Harry Truman.  Getto told Hansen, “…he [Truman] knew all about farming and could talk to us about it intelligently.”

Getto also confessed to high school high jinks (oral history): “Oh! Ditch day. With seniors we’d have a day that… we’d all ditch school…I was student body president, and George McCracken was our principal. He was very strict, very. None of the kids liked him until they got out of school, and then they had this wonderful respect for this man …. So I wrote a note—see, I used to write all my notes, anyway, and Mom would sign them because she didn’t write English very well, so I wrote my note, and then I took her signature. …I traced it on a window, and that morning, boy I was nervous and I went into Mr. McCracken, and he had just railed at somebody else for cutting school…. So it was my turn, and I went into Mr. McCracken, and I sat there and I looked him in the eye. He said, ‘Well, young man, where were you yesterday?’  I looked at him, and I said, ‘I cut school, Mr. McCracken.’ I couldn’t go through with it. Oh, he gave me a pretty good lecture, and he said, ‘What kind of an example are you setting for the rest of the students? Here you are student body president and you’ve cut school.’ And, oh, boy, I was ashamed of myself, but I felt so relieved that I didn’t give him that note and have to live with that guilt. That’s a very good policy in life.”

His insight helped form the political leader, Virgil Getto, who later served a total of 24 years in the Nevada State Legislature, eight of them in the Assembly and six in the Senate. 

Next week, I’ll feature Virgil Getto, the legislator.

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