As a child, J. David Bamberger grew up in an Ohio family without electricity or running water. Each day his mother sent him to the neighbor’s farm with a bucket to pump water from their well. “When you’re that age, walking a quarter-mile back home with a bucket full of water, you end up sloshing half of it on your feet,” Bamberger recalls, smiling. “You could say I learned the value of water conservation at an early age.”
Bamberger worked with his mother on the land. “She taught me the benefits of Mother Nature, to respect and work with her.” He learned to collect, peel, scrub, dry and then sell bundles of sassafras roots in town. This early experience in sales seeded a prolific career that led Bamberger to become chairman and chief executive of Church’s Fried Chicken.
Read more from Daniel Oppenheimer, Land Program Manager of Hill Country Alliance, with Rock & Vine Magazine here.
Bamberger – A strongly rooted legacy
