On winter evenings, a boy carried newborn calves into the family farmhouse. He placed them on the door of a wood-burning stove. That’s one way Clayton K. Yeutter helped keep his family’s Eustis corn-and-cattle operation going through the Great Depression and the Nebraska Dust Bowl.

These farming trials, his whip-smart mind, and fellow Nebraskans’ help propelled Yeutter as a trailblazer in world trade and U.S. politics. He served four presidents and was a U.S. trade representative and the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, but he never forgot his Nebraska roots.

Like many Nebraska farm kids, Yeutter began building the foundation for success in 4-H, where he showed cattle and learned public speaking. Impressed by young Yeutter, one Dawson County extension agent was the first to encourage him to go to college. Years later, another of Yeutter’s 4-H connections, Gov. Norbert T. “Nobby” Tiemann, hired him in a leadership role.               

Yeutter earned his bachelor’s degree in 1952 at the University of Nebraska and met his future wife, Lillian “Jeanne” Vierk. They married after her graduation and lived in Florida for three years, where Yeutter served in the Air Force. Afterward, they moved back to the family farm in Eustis. Yeutter loved the farm, but his wife encouraged him to attend law and graduate school at the University of Nebraska. He ranked first in his law school class in 1963 and was named the university’s outstanding graduate in agricultural economics in 1966. With a world-class education from the University of Nebraska, Yeutter’s biggest adventures were about to begin.

Jeanne, Clayton and their four young children spent two years in Bogota, Colombia, where Yeutter directed an ambitious multi-university agricultural mission for the University of Nebraska. The experience underscored the Yeutters’ concern for the disadvantaged. In Bogota, Jeanne set up a program to improve nutrition for Colombians.

Later, back in the States and working in an ag post for President Richard Nixon, Yeutter helped create a program so that no mother or young child might go hungry. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides federal grants to states for food, health care referrals and nutrition education for low-income pregnant and postpartum women and infants and children. Since 1972, it’s helped millions. But for Yeutter, it was just a start on the impact he’d make on the world.

The Iphones Americans carry in their pockets, the low-cost clothing they buy at big-box stores, and the high prices Nebraska farmers command on corn are all possible because markets went global over the last four decades. Yeutter had a lot to do with it. As President Ronald Reagan’s point man, he set the stage for years of international bargaining that led to sharp cuts in tariffs.

Yeutter kicked off and helped guide bargaining among nations that delivered economic opportunity to hundreds of millions in countries ranging from China and Mexico to Vietnam and Malaysia. The expansion lifted legions worldwide from abject poverty – attacking the kind of destitution that the Yeutters saw in Colombia. His moves also spurred growth in the United States in everything from agricultural exports to professional services that he opened to the globe.

Still, as he reached his career peak in the early 1990s and beyond, Yeutter faced professional and personal tests. His time leading the Department of Agriculture was tumultuous. For example, in a fight over a chemical additive on apples, Yeutter squared off against actress Meryl Streep, who called for suspending it. Defending the Alar additive, he labeled her “a self-proclaimed nutritionist who ought to stick to acting.” In the end, the EPA sided with Streep and banned Alar.

Worse, Yeutter and the nation’s farmers struggled with a dismal farm economy. Bumper crops worldwide meant low prices, infuriating farmers.

But Yeutter held fast to his conviction that farmers relied too much on Washington. He led the way in passing the most market-oriented Farm Bill since the Great Depression.

Next, President George H.W. Bush called on Yeutter to restore order to a troubled Republican National Committee (RNC). A self-described “pragmatist” and non-ideologue, Yeutter steered the RNC away from extremists he loathed, such as former KKK leader David E. Duke, a Republican Louisiana legislator.

Bush then brought Yeutter into the White House for a new cabinet-level job, counselor for domestic policy. Yeutter held that post until Bush asked him to serve as deputy chairman for the Bush-Quayle re-election effort for a few months until the November 1992 election. Despite Yeutter’s efforts, Bush lost to former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

Soon after that political disappointment, Yeutter faced the greatest loss of his life. Jeanne died of a presumed heart attack in August 1993. “When someone commented … that Jeanne was ‘one in a billion,’ a lady standing nearby intervened to comment that such a ratio did her a disservice,” Yeutter wrote a friend in the following year.

Still vibrant and charismatic in his 60s, Yeutter found someone to share his life with anew. His marriage to Cristena Bach opened a new domestic chapter in Yeutter’s life. The couple adopted three girls. He prioritized raising them over his career.

For Yeutter, it was a second chance to be a father. He had often been away from his first family because of work. As his infant daughters grew into toddlerhood, he joined them for tea parties, wearing a pink feather boa around his neck and clip-on earrings dangling from his ears.

Later, he attended their school and sporting events, volunteering to help on school trips and giving the girls driving lessons – though he was a notoriously bad driver. He asked his daughter Elena at age 14 whether she wanted to take the wheel, and she then routinely did so when he came to pick her up at school – a father-daughter secret kept from Cristena.

He gathered all his children to watch Husker football games on TV. Devoted to the team, the university and the state, Yeutter and Cristena even named an adopted rescue dog “Husker.”

Though he ratcheted down his professional activities, Yeutter remained connected in business, law and politics. He served on corporate boards, gave paid speeches and worked at a Washington law firm. Yeutter died at 86 in March 2017 of colon cancer. He and Jeanne are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Today, a stretch of road between Eustis and Cozad – a road Yeutter often drove as a teen – bears his name. Yeutter and Cristena also endowed an institute in his name at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It trains students to work in Yeutter’s most beloved arena, international trade. That realm – his most significant professional legacy – is something he would have never dreamed of if not for the Nebraskans who helped him along the way.