Farmer devoted years to his land, community

BY KATHY BARATTA Staff Writer

84, died on June 23 a piece of living history passed with him.

Charles Wikoff Charles Wikoff However, his family name and more importantly his family’s farming legacy, continues with his son, James, who still works the family farm — the only working farm on Route 9 at any point between Old Bridge and Howell.

Wikoff, whose family name is as recognizably venerable throughout Monmouth County as is his wife Lydia’s maiden name of Stillwell, was part of the foundation of what Manalapan is today. Wikoff saw the town develop from the sleepy farm community it was when he and Lydia started farming their land in 1950.

Lydia Wikoff, 84, is one of Manalapan’s township historians (lifelong resident Edward Burke is the other). She is a living, breathing storehouse of local lore, a treasure trove of Manalapan memories.

She shared much of that history with Charles, from his years of service on the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District Board of Education when the township was just starting to develop, to his presidency of the Monmouth County Board of Agriculture when the need to protect the rights of farmers became a county policy.

Charles and Lydia Wikoff spent more than 60 years together and watched Manalapan develop from a farming community into a suburban enclave. Charles Wikoff served for more than 15 years on the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District Board of Education. Charles and Lydia Wikoff spent more than 60 years together and watched Manalapan develop from a farming community into a suburban enclave. Charles Wikoff served for more than 15 years on the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District Board of Education. Wikoff received the Monmouth County Board of Agriculture’s Outstanding Service Award in 1984. That was followed by the New Jersey Alumni Award from the 4- H Youth Development Program.

Wikoff said her husband, “who was on that tractor every day until a year ago,” considered his service to farmers and farming a sacred trust.

“Charles always said, ‘I think there’s a need for farmers here. The community enjoys the aesthetic value of seeing the sequence of farming, plowing, planting, the maturity of crops, and harvesting; eventually reaping the rewards of good produce,’ ” she recalled.

Both of their families hearken back to a time when Manalapan was mostly farm fields and dirt roads and the highway (Route 9) that the Wikoff farm sits on just north of Gordons Corner Road was a twolane concrete road that saw only a little more traffic than the dirt side roads.

It was to that Manalapan that Lydia said Charles returned after his service in World War II.

After completing an agricultural course at Cook College, Rutgers University, he took a position in the university’s Plant Pathology Department and started his farming career on 150 acres of land that had been in Lydia’s family for six generations.

A current antique shop on the southbound side of Route 9 near the spot where Pine Brook Road enters the highway is the home where Lydia was born and in which she grew up. It is the land she and Charles starting farming after their marriage in 1946.

Just across the highway on the northbound side is the 60-acre farm where Lydia and Charles started out raising potatoes and ended up raising grain crops along with their three children after purchasing the place in 1950.

Today, their son James still farms the family’s land and he and his siblings, Charles and Susan, along with their mother, know the legacy will continue after them because the 200 acres of the combined Stillwell-Wikoff farmland has been preserved in a farmland preservation program and will not be developed.

As steeped as he was in all things agricultural, Charles Wikoff also proved to be something of a renaissance man. He served for 16 years on the Manalapan- Englishtown Regional School District Board of Education and his years of service on the school board spanned a very formative and changing time in the country and the township — the early 1960s.

Remembering how those years marked the start of the development that would end up transforming Manalapan’s landscape from rural to suburban, Lydia recalled that Charles was part of a school board that anticipated the education needs that would come with all of that residential development and acted to meet those needs in a way that will likely never be seen again.

According to Lydia, although Charles and his fellow board members came up with the request, it was not hard to get developer Kevork Hovnanian Sr. to acquiesce when he was asked to build a school to meet the burgeoning educational needs Manalapan was facing, given all the new residential development.

She said she remembers that Hovnanian was “happy to comply” and that “not many people know that or would believe it possible, but he donated the land and built the school at his cost and according to state standards.”

The building Hovnanian constructed at the request of the board was the Pine Brook School, Pease Road, she said, noting that in another case, Levitt, which built the Monmouth Heights development off Taylors Mills Road, built the Lafayette Mills School on Maxwell Lane.

Lydia said although her husband made time to serve with distinction on community boards and with church activities, nothing made him happier than teaching his grandchildren to fish on Piper Pond, playing cards with close friends or taking weekend trips with his wife.

“Throughout a courageous battle with cancer, Charles maintained the spirit in his heart and the sparkle in his eye that will be remembered by all who were fortunate to have enjoyed his presence,” she said.

Judging by his achievements and Lydia’s assessment of the man she shared a life with for 62 years — “Charles was devoted to his farm and family, cultivating a lifetime of fond memories and caring relationships,”— Charles Wikoff reaped what he sowed and it was a full and satisfying yield.