Freehold High School Graduate Shares Story of Life After a Chicken Farm

When former Howell resident Ludwig "Lud" Gutmann decided to apply to Princeton University, he says even the school principal at questioned the move. 

After all, the Ivy League School did not have a lot of children raised on chicken farms and there had never been a student from the local school to attend Princeton.

Not only did he prove them wrong by getting accepted, he also went to medical school. And now at 79-years-old, he is an accomplished professor of Neurology at West Virginia University. 

In his second book entitled "Richard Road Journey From Hate" Gutmann recalls his time growing up in Monmouth County and his life after leaving his family's chicken farm. "The book was a way of putting together some history about my family, but also the history about the chicken farm industry," he said. 

He can still remember the cold winter days when his dad would come into the house after working on the farm and how hard it was for him. While he was busy studying and doing his homework, Gutmann said his dad would spend time breaking up ice and defrosting the chicken's water fountains in addition to collecting the eggs on the nine acre property.

Gutmann said he can remember a time when there was even talk of changing the state nickname to the Chicken State. "Fortunately that never happened," he said with a laugh. 

While he has lived in West Virginia for a long time now, Gutmann said Monmouth County will always hold a special place in his heart. "The most formative important years in a person's life were probably the first 15 to 18 years," he said. "Howell is where I grew up. I spent most of those first 18 years in Howell so that makes Howell a very special place. It's a place where I became a real person."

Making his way from Richard Road to Nassau Street, Gutmann said was a big transition. Not only was he from a family that ran a chicken farm but he was also part of a minority of Jewish students at the university. "When I was there Princeton had made the commitment to get rid of its religious selectivity," he said. "There was a lot of concern on the part of the alumni at that time about letting a relatively large number of Jews into the university."

The cultural differences he saw at Princeton were not all that different than what he experienced growing up in Howell and Freehold. In the book he describes the differences between even the different immigrants. Families like his that came from Germany, he said had different priorities than those that came from Eastern Europe. 

He said that was evidenced by his family's commitment to his education. "For my parents and for the other Germans that were farmers this was clearly a one generation business," he said. "The emphasis was lets survive on these farms to get our kids educated and get them into professions."

This is not the first book Gutmann has written and he is already working on another, but writing about something so personal was a new experience. "When I first started writing I said I don't have enough to put a book together," he said. It's sort of like a snowball rolling down the hill. You pick up memories that you hadn't thought about in a long time. 

Gutmann's book can be purchased at local book stores as well as on websites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. To learn more about Gutmann's story check out his website.