Interview with Edward Omer Haelterman, D.V.M., PhD
Interviewer: Ann E. Kerker
Date: November 28, 1988
Kerker This is an interview with Professor Emeritus Edward
Omer Haelterman, School of Veterinary Medicine,
Purdue University, held on November 28, 1988, in the
Trustee's Room, Stewart Center, Purdue University.
The interviewer is Ann E. Kerker, Professor and
Veterinary Medical Librarian Emerita.
Kerker Ed, from reading your biography, I know that you
were born in Michigan and received the DVM degree from
Michigan State University in 1952. Would you tell us
something about your background?
Haelterman Like most veterinarians of my day and before, I was
raised on a farm on which animals were central to our
way of living. In our case, it was a dairy farm in
Upper Michigan. We lived closely and continuously with
those animals. We worked for them as well as they
provided for us. This mutual dependency fostered a
relationship which was quite different from that
professed by the "animal lovers" of today. We might
have used the term "love" for animals somewhat in the
same context as we now say we love our work. We were
deeply involved with our cows, our horses, and the other
animals on which we depended, we cared for them in the
very best way we knew, we sheltered them, we fed them,
we studied them, we bred them, nursed them and cleaned
their manure, but in the end we sold them or killed them
and ate them.
In high school, maybe before, I had a lively interest in
science and had some vague aspiration of being a chemist
but I graduated at 16 years of age in 1935, at the depth
of the depression. Although our farm provided us a good
living in terms of food and shelter, we were almost
outside of the money economy. Higher education seemed
out of the question; about two-thirds of my peers didn't
even finish high school. So I helped build our farm, I
worked temporarily on a fox ranch, where incidentally I
met virologist Richard Ott who was studying a new
disease of foxes that eventually turned out to be fox
encephalitis caused by the same virus as that of canine
hepatitis. I found it interesting but I was on the
"bullgang" employed for my muscle and not my curiosity,
so I earned my 35 cents an hour by hauling feed bags,
and catching foxes, not by helping the young Dr. Ott as
I would have liked. Another thing that happened on
Hiawatha fox farm was that a fox bit my hand so I went
to a local physician. Through this, and several other
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