Small town veterinarian — big time heart
Late Albert Moraska selected for Vermont Agricultural Hall of Fame
Sue Moraska once tried to read “All Creatures Great and Small,” but put it down.
The book, the first in a series about an English country veterinarian’s experiences treating farm animals and dealing with their owners, was too much like her own life.
“It was just my everyday life,” she said.
For 25 years, Moraska, the daughter of longtime Charlotte veterinarian Albert Moraska, worked with her father. He has recently been inducted into the Vermont Agricultural Hall of Fame in the Lifetime Achievement category.
Sue Moraska said her father’s red pickup truck was his office, and he loved traveling around northwestern Vermont treating animals. Although there was an office at their home on Spear Street, north of Hinesburg Road, it was used for medical supplies, for the tools a country veterinarian needs and for taking care of office work. Not so much for tending animals.
“He went to the animals,” Sue Moraska said, although sometimes smaller animals like goats, sheep or pets were brought to their home.
For more than four decades, Albert Moraska went to treat primarily farm animals, and along the way, he made lots of friends and formed lots of bonds. So, many of the farms he visited considered him family.
She said, often when her father made a farm call, lots of people would be watching him ministering to the animals. Not only would the farm family come over, lots of times the neighbors would come over to say “hi” to her father, who most knew as Doc.
“This category recognizes those who have made a significant contribution to the advancement, improvement or development of Vermont agriculture over the course of their long career. Nominees shall have played an active role in Vermont agriculture for at least 30 years,” says a description from the hall of fame at the Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex.
The organization’s website says that since 2002 more than 90 farmers, producers and “people who support Vermont’s working landscape” have been inducted into the Vermont Agricultural Hall of Fame.
“Thanks for the good news,” said Charles Russell, upon hearing of Moraska’s inclusion in the hall of fame. The former Charlotte Selectboard member and current chair of the development review board added, “He was a great guy.”
Russell told a story about how once in bad winter weather, Albert Moraska slid off the road and into a field. He paid a tow-truck operator $2,500 to get his truck pulled back up to the road.
It was a pity because there were lots of farmers with tractors in the area who would have gladly pulled him out for free if they had known, Russell said.
In the hall of fame description of Doc’s many contributions in other fields besides large-animal veterinary medicine, it notes that he was chair of the Charlotte Planning Commission for 22 years.
He volunteered as a life member of the Vermont Veterinary Medical Association and chaired the Large Animal Education Program, according to the Vermont Agricultural Hall of Fame.
Mary and Onan Whitcomb of North Williston Cattle Company headed up the nominating effort to get Moraska into the hall of fame.
“Dr. Moraska was an outstanding veterinarian, a dedicated mentor to young people interested in agriculture and veterinary careers and a great friend to people and animals throughout Vermont,” Mary Whitcomb said. “I can’t think of anyone more deserving of this award.”
When she and her husband told other farmers they were nominating Moraska for the state hall of fame, more than 50 said they wanted to be part of the effort and their names are listed on the application.
The Whitcombs’ daughter is one of the many young people mentored by Doc Moraska. When she was younger, Rebecca Allen went with him on calls to farms many times. Now, she is a large animal veterinarian.
Once, Moraska showed up late to a vet call at the Whitcombs’ farm. Mary Whitcomb learned his tardiness was because on the way he had stopped at the home of a family in Shelburne who had adopted two children from Russia. Among Doc’s talents, besides taking care of large animals, was speaking Russian and, by the way, German. He had stopped to help the family with translation.
“He just gave so much to so many people,” Whitcomb said. “Every farmer I spoke to has had a ‘Doc story.’”
Some of the Doc stories she heard “would make you laugh and some would bring you to tears,” she said. “And I could relate to all of them.”
There were stories about him going out at 3 a.m. on New Year’s Eve to deliver a calf.
Sue Moraska said there were so many times when her father would have been out all night on a call, yet the next morning when he went back out, people would never know, because he was happy and upbeat. Even if the previous call had a terrible outcome, Doc had an amazing ability to regroup and leave the sadness behind. Every call was a new call.
A man once told Sue Moraska that, when he was a little boy growing up on a farm, he couldn’t wait for her dad to come. After Doc finished treating the animals, he would always scrub and disinfect his boots so that he didn’t carry any contagious germs with him. The man said that Doc would wash his boots, too.
“He said, ‘That meant the world to me,” Sue Moraska said. “All these little things he did that meant big things.”