Benjamin Thomas Laflin Jr.

1921 - 2015

Benjamin Thomas Laflin Jr. (Ben)

Ben Laflin, date grower and life-long resident of the Coachella Valley passed away at his home in Bermuda Dunes, California on Saturday, November 21st. He was 94. He was born on September 3, 1921 to Benjamin Thomas Laflin Sr. and Lucy Tucker Laflin, both pioneer residents of the Coachella Valley, Ben Sr. having arrived in 1911 and Lucy as a young school teacher in 1916. There were no hospitals in the valley so the Laflins went into Los Angeles, where Ben Jr. was born at Good Samaritan Hospital. Ben Jr. always said that he was born under a palm tree, and he was, but that palm was in front of the hospital in LA. Palm culture ultimately became his life work. Ben attended local schools, graduating from Coachella Valley Union High School in 1939 and the University of California, Berkeley in 1947 with a degree in Plant Science. His education at Berkeley was interrupted by the start of World War II and in 1942 he joined the Navy, serving for three and a half years in the medical corps. He achieved the rank of Corpsman First Class and spent most of his military career on a troop ship, the USS Rochambeau, making multiple trips to the South Pacific. After the war he returned to Berkeley for his BS degree and earned a Masters in Plant Pathology. He was a member of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity and was elected to Alpha Zeta and Sigma Xi, honorary science fraternities. He was on the Cal wrestling team and a member of Circle C Society. While at Cal, Ben met and married fellow-student Patricia Anne Baker from Redding, California. Ben's education had prepared him to return to the Coachella Valley and go into business with his parents who had developed a ranch in the Thermal area. After his parents' deaths, Ben and Pat continued the business as Laflin Date Gardens. It continues today as Oasis Date Gardens. Ben continued to work with the University of California at its Berkeley, Davis and Riverside campuses. The ranch grew grapes and vegetable crops as well as dates and Ben conducted field tests of new varieties for the University and for the USDA Date and Citrus Station in Indio. Laflin Date Gardens was a vertically-integrated business growing dates, grading and packaging them for the wholesale trade and operating a retail store and mail-order business from their ranch location. It became known world-wide as Ben generously shared his knowledge of date culture with visiting plant scientists and date growers from the Middle East, India, Africa and Australia and hosted students from Iran and Australia at the home ranch. He made consulting trips for the United Nations Development Program, for USAID and at the request of individual governments and organizations, visiting Saudi Arabia, India, Oman, Jordan, Bahrain and Israel. A highlight of his date travels was a visit to Morocco in 1995 when he and Pat were able to visit the oasis of Bou Denib, on the outskirts of the Sahara. This was the place from which the USDA secured nine Medjool offshoots in 1927. All of the Medjools grown in the US today have come from those nine imported offshoots. In addition to his travels to date growing areas of the world, Ben and Pat enjoyed many trips around the United States and abroad and for a time had a summer home in Southeast Alaska. In the early 1970s, Ben took a job teaching Life Science at Woodrow Wilson Middle School in Indio. With three children in college at the time, supplementary income was important and he managed to successfully take care of teaching, and running the ranch and packing house. He taught for six years. He enlivened lessons with a menagerie of snakes and other desert animals, and a vegetable garden on the school grounds where students could each plant a row of seeds of their choosing. He loved farming and wanted them to have the thrill of seeing things grow. Besides his life-long involvement in the date industry, Ben contributed to the valley with years of public service. He served on the Board of Trustees of the Coachella Valley Mosquito and Vector Control District for fifty five years, sharing his knowledge of entomology with that body. He was a trustee of the Coachella Valley High School for seventeen years and served multiple terms on the Soil Conservation District Board and the Date Committee of the Riverside County Fair and Date Festival. Because he grew a wide variety of dates, he was able to showcase the breadth of our valley's date industry by furnishing both feature exhibits and competitive displays for the Date Festival for over forty years. He was a member of the Coachella Valley Rotary Club and Coachella Masonic Lodge No. 476. Ben also hosted field trips to his date garden by foreign delegations and groups like the Metropolitan Water District, sharing his knowledge of Coachella Valley and date history with his visitors. When Ben and Pat sold the home ranch, they moved to Bermuda Dunes Country Club, where they were members. Ben is survived by his wife of 67 years, Pat, and their five children, Kathleen (Ron) Humphrey, Barbara Treat, James (Jeanie) Laflin, Susan (Jordan) Kramer, and Diane (Tim) Burke. He also leaves twelve grandchildren, Jennifer Braten (Cliff), Alison Cutler (Tandyn) Sayre, Aki, Jamie and Noah Laflin; Matthew and Jacqueline Kramer; Nathaniel and Kelley Burke; Tucker and Mayland Treat; and great grandchildren, Lillian and Sam Cutler. A Celebration of Ben's life will be held at St. Andrew Community Presbyterian Church on Monroe Street in Indio on Sunday, December 27th at 3 PM. This is the church where Ben was a member for 83 years and where he served as a Sunday School teacher and Elder for many years. Those wishing to make a memorial gift may direct it to the church at 47-192 Monroe St. or to the Coachella Valley Historical Society at 82616 Miles Avenue, Indio, California, 92201.

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