HeartBeat Summer 2018 | Page 5

MEMBER FEATURE Building a Legacy Hassard Elevator celebrates 100 years in business By Joann Pipkin North of the capital city, Highway 54 leads us through rural Missouri’s heartland. From fertile bottoms to gently rolling hills, the dust flies on this early summer day as farmers work the fields. The road winds east from Mexico before our journey heads to the northeast corner of the state, past Mark Twain Lake. Along the way, hogs, cattle, sheep and even horses gently fill in the landscape around well-kept homesteads. Here, hard work and determination stand tall alongside a century-old tradition that makes Hassard Elevator thrive amid the very hands that put it on the map. For generations, the Benson family has carried a legacy built in 1918 by Harvey Benson and seven other farmers in the unincorporated community of Hassard, just east of Monroe City on Highway J, in Ralls County. Through every depression, drought, flood and war since, Hassard Elevator has persevered lending more than service to their farmer-customers. Today, Harvey Benson’s descendants cultivate the business he first helped establish. Son Don Sr. “Rink” along with grandsons Donnie and Danny and great-grandson Aaron are humble servants to a community bound together by a hundred years worth of tradition.