Thomas Victor Downing (21 October 1892–22 September 1987), cofounder of Ruritan, was born Thomas Victor Downin on a small farm near Williamsport, in Washington County, Maryland, and was the son of David Victor Downin and Emma Katherine Corbett Downin. He graduated from the public high school in nearby Hagerstown in 1913 and then worked as a government clerk at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Virginia in order to earn money for college. Downin entered Maryland Agricultural College, which became Maryland State College while he was enrolled and later the University of Maryland, but he had to suspend his studies in June 1916 when the National Guard unit in which he served was called into federal service. He was stationed on the Mexican border until the autumn. The following year, after the United States entered World War I, Downin went on active duty again as a second lieutenant assigned to the clerical staff of the adjutant general's office at an army post in New Jersey. He served in France from December 1917 to April 1919, posted to General Headquarters and then to the headquarters staff of the 91st Infantry Division, and on 9 October 1918 received a commission in the same grade in the United States Army.
Downin returned to college after his discharge in 1919 and the following year received a degree in agricultural education. Sometime after moving to Virginia in 1920 to take a job teaching vocational agriculture in Northampton County, he began spelling his surname Downing. In 1924 he moved to Suffolk as a district supervisor of vocational agricultural education for the Virginia Department of Education. On 12 August 1925 Downing married Jonnie F. Mathews, a Nansemond County teacher. They had one son and one daughter.
Early in 1928 during one of his regular meetings with agricultural teachers, Downing and Jesse Johnson Gwaltney, of Nansemond County, conceived the idea for the Ruritan (Daisy Nurney, Suffolk correspondent for the Virginian-Pilot and the Norfolk Landmark, coined the name). Gwaltney conducted evening classes in agriculture for farmers between December and April each year and wanted to continue monthly classes during the spring and summer. Downing suggested that they form a rural community organization patterned after the Lion and Rotary Clubs that could include farmers, local business, and professional men, as well. In addition to assisting Gwaltney continue his adult education program, Downing wanted to create an organization that allowed members of rural communities to discuss subjects relating to agriculture, education, churches, and youth.
Downing and Gwaltney held an organizational meeting in Suffolk on 16 April 1928 and a meeting on 21 May in Holland, in Nansemond County, to elect officers. The following month they drafted the first Ruritan constitution requiring that at least half of the members be farmers and include at least one person from each business and profession in town. They also encouraged membership of local government officials. The attendance roster of the first Ruritan included two agricultural workers, three ministers, one educator, one banker, three merchants, one peanut dealer, one cotton ginner, one logger, two county officials, one mechanic, and one physician. The club focused on a variety of issues important in rural communities such as public health and sanitation, utilities, recreation, educational and economic opportunities for youth, agriculture, business and industrial practices, and community goodwill.
Because Downing lived in Suffolk, he was ineligible for membership in the first official Ruritan club in Holland, but by December 1929 he had moved to Holland and become a member. After he moved to Ivor, in Southampton County, he joined the Ivor Ruritan. Downing worked to expand the Ruritan clubs in southeastern Virginia and in 1930 organized Ruritan National. In 1932 the first national Ruritan convention met in Suffolk, and the following year the second annual convention, also held in Suffolk, elected him as second vice president. In 1935 Downing became president of the Ruritan National. That year he also began editing the organization's monthly newsletter, Ruritan News. From 1945 to 1973 Downing served as the secretary of Ruritan National.
Downing tirelessly promoted the organization to agricultural instructors and civic leaders in southeastern states and assisted them in forming local Ruritan clubs. At the beginning of 1947, Ruritan had 139 clubs in five states, and by 1951 it had 350 clubs in eleven states from Maryland to Florida. At the time of Downing's death, 1,330 Ruritan clubs counted more than 36,000 members.
While promoting Ruritan, Downing took graduate classes in agricultural economics at Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute (later Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) between 1930 and 1934 and in 1939 completed an M.S. in that subject at Cornell University. In 1947 Downing became an assistant supervisor of agricultural education, with an emphasis on forestry, in the Vocational Education Division of the Virginia Department of Education. The professional association Virginia Forests, Inc., designated him Man of the Year in Forestry in 1949 for his work promoting forestry education among Virginia's vocational agriculture students. In 1952 the Progressive Farmer named Downing its Man of the Year in Service to Virginia Agriculture, and in 1953 he received one of five American Forestry Association Conservation Awards for conducting forestry workshops for Virginia's agricultural instructors. These workshops were widespread and effective. Of more than 75,000 students enrolled in vocational agriculture at that time, more than 80 percent received forestry training, and from 1950 to 1953 they planted an estimated six million seedlings throughout Virginia.
Downing retired from the State Department of Education on 1 May 1958. Late in the 1970s he and his wife moved to Augusta, Georgia, where she died on 19 March 1982. Thomas Victor Downing died in a hospital in Richmond County, Georgia, on 22 September 1987. Following a funeral at the Ivor United Methodist Church, he was buried in the Ivor Cemetery. That same year the Ruritan National Foundation established the Tom Downing Fellow Award to support its educational work.
Sources Consulted:
Biography in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 29 Dec. 1952; self-reported birth date in World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1917–1918), RG 163, and World War II Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards (1942), Record Group 147, both National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; Marriage Register, Nansemond Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); Ruritan National Records (1928–1958), Acc. 24763, and Ruritan National (Wakefield, Va.), Records (1928–1963), Acc. 25816, both LVA; Downing, "Ruritan's Beginning," Virginia and the Virginia County 4 (Sept. 1950): 22, 44–45 (portrait on 22); Bruce M. Kent, C. E. Myers, and Joe Byrum, History of Ruritan National (ca. 1952); Virginia Forests 4 (Nov./Dec. 1949): inside front cover, 5; Progressive Farmer (Carolinas-Virginia ed.) 68 (Jan. 1953): 15, 92; Commonwealth 20 (Feb. 1954): 31–32; obituaries in Richmond News Leader, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Suffolk News-Herald, all 24 Sept. 1987, and Ruritan 52 (Oct./Nov. 1987): 10 (with cover portrait); memorial in Ruritan 52 (Dec. 1987/Jan. 1988): 14.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Kelley M. Ewing.
How to cite this page:
Kelley M. Ewing, "Thomas Victor Downing (1892–1897)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2021 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Downing_Thomas_Victor, accessed [today's date]).
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