At 100, Evelyn Brandt Thomas reflects on working every day and her company's early days

Evelyn Brandt Thomas joked recently that everybody in a 50-mile radius seemed to know her 100th birthday was coming up on Aug. 25.

"It's hard to believe (turning 100), but I don't think I'm going to change a thing," she said. "I'm a little more conscious about visiting with the friends I still have, like at Concordia Village (where I live). I need to think about what I want to do and what I want to say and what I want to have.

"But if there's a party or anything going on, I'm ready to go."

Brandt Thomas, one of the founders of Brandt Consolidated, Inc., an agri-business celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, still goes into the West Koke Mill Road office every day--"my therapy," she said. Her involvement now is with Brandt's charitable and philanthropic work.

Wednesday marks the groundbreaking of the Evelyn Brandt Thomas Innovation Center at Brandt's facility in Pleasant Plains where it has a 300-acre research farm and test plots. The village, not far from where she was born in Salisbury Township, has also declared it Evelyn Brandt Thomas Day.

Brandt Thomas, the 2022 State Journal-Register First Citizen, was feted at the Governor's Sale of Champions at the Illinois State Fair on Wednesday, with the crowd joining in a round of "Happy Birthday."

Illinois Department of Agriculture Director Jerry Costello II told the gathering at the Coliseum that she was "the epitome of what it means to give back, not only to agriculture, but to society.

"She's given back year after year after year here to kids in the State of Illinois and not small amounts," Costello told The State Journal-Register after the event. "She's a pillar in the agricultural community in a lot of ways, but especially in giving back to kids in ag education."

More: Even minus bidding, grand champion steer ties record price; 'It's an incredible feeling'

Brandt's shelled out $40,000 for the Illinois-bred grand champion steer at the sale, but Brandt Thomas has long personally supported FFA and the 4-H, participating in both as a teenager.

The soil lab in the Kreher Agriculture Center at Lincoln Land Community College is named for her late husband, Gordon Thomas, who died in 2003. Brandt Thomas has founded scholarships at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where her husband graduated, and the University of Illinois Springfield.

"Evelyn is just one of those just rock-solid philanthropists in this community who has supported so many different things," said John Stremsterfer, President and CEO of the Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln. "Our organization is built of community-based philanthropy and her having a fund with us is just so fitting because of her commitment to that, of helping our local community. She does put her money where her mouth is, no doubt.

"It's just so nice when people have that perspective this is where I accumulated my wealth, and this is where I'm going to spend it on good things. We need more Evelyn Brandt Thomases in the world."

Brandt Thomas grew up on her grandfather's farm which had no electricity and no indoor plumbing. She and her brother, Glen, with whom she started Brandt's, attended a one-room schoolhouse. Her father, Albert Brandt, farmed with horses for the first 12 years of her life.

"We lived off the land, literally," she said. "Of course, we raised our own meat, and we had a big garden."

It was on the farm, and at Springfield High School where Brandt Thomas developed an eye for the ledger.

She attended Illinois Business College in downtown Springfield before going to work in the advertising department of the Illinois State Journal, a forerunner of The State Journal-Register.

Of those early days in the fertilizer business, "it was a struggle. I worried a lot. If the money wasn't there, I wouldn't write the check.

"But we had a good relationship with all the local bankers. They had confidence in us. We kept a good credit rating."

Farmers were especially skeptical, she recalled, about liquid fertilizer, which Brandt's helped pioneer. One of their first customers remarked that it "looked like water."

"Seeing was believing. That was the best advertising," Brandt Thomas said.

Now Brandt's is a worldwide company in 80 countries.

"From small-town Illinois, those things can happen with a lot of hard work and with a lot of integrity," Costello added.

Often, being the only woman in meetings or board rooms "never inhibited me," Brandt Thomas said, adding she's "pleased" to see so many women in the ag industry.

And for that 100th birthday?

Brandt Thomas said that she bought herself two scooters.

At the fair, she saw the Butter Cow, which first took shape in 1922.

"It's someone older than me," she quipped. "I tell people that and they just crack up."

Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Evelyn Brandt Thomas a founder of Brandt's Fertilizers turns 100