Rodney Wells: Military Man and Farmer

Our founder, Rodney Ardell Wells, was born in Topeka, Kansas, and raised in Compton, California.

Military service was in Rodney's blood: He was descended from several members of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry and the U.S. Colored Troops, all former slaves who fought for the United States. He was also a descendant of the slaves held by the Cherokee Freedmen on his father's side of the family.

His father was career military, and Rodney started his own 30-year active duty Navy career in 1973, fresh out of Manuel Dominguez High School. Rodney spent 15 years of that career on surface ships and 15 on submarines. He was Chief of the Boat (COB) on the USS Pogy and Command Master Chief on the USS Shiloh and the USS Pearl Harbor.

Rodney retired from the Navy in 2003 and married Sherril Babcock in 2007. In 2010, having moved from Los Angeles to Fresno, they started a small organic farm, selling produce at area farmers’ markets. These first five years were instructive. After a brief move to Monterey in 2015, they returned to Fresno in 2016 and again took up farming but with a different goal: to donate all produce to Fresno-area food banks and organizations serving food-insecure individuals.

Rodney did all this with service-connected heart and lung conditions caused by his 24 years of sea service, including a bout with tuberculosis while on duty as COB. He died from those conditions on Dec. 8, 2020, between two 12-hour shifts at the Veterans Hospital boiler plant in Fresno, CA. He is survived by his wife, Sherril Nell Babcock Wells.

Recognition

Congressional Record, June 30, 2021 – Vol. 167, No. 114
Honoring the Life of Rodney Ardell Wells

Planting Seeds: Food & Farming News from California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) – reprinted from the Fresno Bee, March 3, 2015
From Navy Man to farmer