Sept. 24, 2025
Contact: Cary Littlejohn, carylittlejohn@missouri.edu
On quiet walks past Sanborn Field on the University of Missouri campus, Todd Graves, BS Ag ’88, often pauses to reflect — not only on the long history of research rooted in the soil, but also on the footsteps that came before him. His great-grandfather walked the same path more than a century ago. His father in the 1950s. And Graves left his own footprints on campus as a student in the 1980s.
Now, as chair of the University of Missouri Board of Curators, he carries that legacy forward.
“When you think about Mizzou, the thing you think about first, especially if you went to college here like I did, are the educational opportunities,” Graves said. “You think about the professors you met, the things that you learned. But now, in my role as chair, I think about more than what we give to individual students. I think about what we give the world. It’s a much bigger opportunity for us, and that excites me as a member of the board.”
For the Graves family, Mizzou is more than an alma mater. It connects five generations through education, hard work and vision. From a farm town of 1,500 in northwest Missouri, they used the university as their anchor to the state and their launchpad to the future.
From foundation to new frontiers
Graves sees Sanborn Field as a testament to the power of research and a reminder of where curiosity can lead.
When the field was first developed in 1888, its 38 plots were intended to serve the needs of a largely agricultural state by demonstrating the value of crop rotation and studying Missouri soils. Researchers focused on soil health, erosion, fertilizer run-off, crop rotation and best methods to recover exhausted land.
But one plot held a surprise. A sample from Plot 23 now resides in the Smithsonian Institution — not because of its agricultural value but because of a breakthrough in medicine.
In 1945, soil from that plot led to the creation of the antibiotic aureomycin after researcher William Albrecht sent off samples for analysis. Turns out, the soil contained a golden mold that suppressed the growth of many microorganisms, including streptococci, a bacterium responsible for a wide range of infections.
“So modern antibiotics were essentially invented on an agricultural research field created in 1888,” Graves said. “At the time, they had no idea where it would lead by 1945.”
That’s the promise of research, he said. Pure possibility.
“I think it’s the ultimate form of optimism when people and a state invest in research like we have here,” Graves said. “We don’t know exactly where we’re going, but we know that it’s going to be good when we get there.”
Take the MU Research Reactor, for example.
MURR was first envisioned in the 1950s, when Graves’ father, Sam, attended Mizzou. By 1966, it was operational, and within a decade, it had increased from 5 megawatts to 10. Despite financial pressures that threatened closure of the reactor in the 1990s, researchers there stayed the course.
“And now it’s one of the gems of the United States,” Graves said. “We have the most powerful university research reactor in the country, and we’re the nation’s only producer of four different medical isotopes.”
As board chair, Graves sees it as his responsibility to help ensure that legacy continues. One of the next big steps? NextGen MURR, a planned 20-megawatt, state-of-the-art reactor.
“That reactor won’t be built during my time on the board of curators or as its chair, but I have to put the bricks in place to help build the foundation for it,” Graves said. “That’s the kind of horizon we have to think about.”
And then there’s the groundbreaking agricultural research that traces back to the earliest days of the crop-rotation field that would become Sanborn Field.
Since its founding, agriculture has been a cornerstone of the university’s mission, and that continues today in labs and fields across the state.
“Great work is still being done, whether it’s in crop research and soil testing at the Roy Blunt Center Soil Testing and Research Laboratory or in animal health,” Graves said. “Consider the cattle research of Dr. Roman Ganta from the College of Veterinary Medicine and Bond Life Sciences Center. His work led to the creation of a new vaccine to protect cattle from bovine anaplasmosis, a tick-borne disease that causes nearly $1 billion in losses worldwide. It’s not commercially available yet, but the potential impact is huge.”
‘The university’
While cutting-edge research is a hallmark at Mizzou, the Graves family story begins where many Missouri stories do: on a farm where chores and hard work were daily life. And so was the expectation of education.
Graves and his siblings came by their love for Mizzou honestly. They grew up enamored with the university and all things Columbia thanks to their father.
“I’m very education-minded, and I really pushed them to get a good education,” Sam Graves said during a recent visit to campus with Todd Graves and other family members. “To me, there wasn’t any better place than the University of Missouri.”
It’s rare, Todd Graves noted, to hear his father use the full name.
“When you told people where you went to college, you’d just say ‘the university,’” he reminded his father. “As if there were no other universities.”
While she didn’t have the opportunity to attend college herself, Todd Graves’ mother, Janice, was the one who instilled a deep respect for learning and curiosity.
“She was probably the most intellectually curious person in the family,” he said.
Todd Graves remembers bringing home a catalog of course offerings after attending Summer Welcome. She was awestruck by the array of possibilities, encouraging her son to take any class he was interested in.
“It was almost wistful,” Todd Graves said. “Like she wished she would have been able to do that.”
Todd Graves also knew there was more to the university experience than lectures and textbooks. Mizzou was a place to discover new ideas, to network, to develop leadership skills.
“I was an ag major in undergrad, and there’s hardly a person in this state that’s in agriculture leadership that I didn’t know through college,” Todd Graves said. “If you’re in the agriculture industry in this state, all roads go through Columbia.”
One of those roads led to his first taste of public service: working for then-U.S. Senate candidate Christopher “Kit” Bond. Graves wasn’t political at the time, but he was curious about the process.
“It was one of the greatest and most eye-opening growth experiences I ever had,” said Todd Graves, a lawyer with Graves Garrett Greim LLC and previous U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.
Family traditions
The Graves family has had a lot of growth experiences at Mizzou. On their recent trip back to campus, Graves family members reflected on the traditions that shaped them here. For them, Mizzou has always been a family affair, Todd Graves’ sister, Trisha Johnson, said.
Trips to campus for football games. A family friend in Marching Mizzou who seemed like a celebrity. Tailgates that were “little picnics out of the car.”
“The tailgating wasn’t like it is now; it wasn’t fancy,” Johnson said. “It was just wholesome fun. We were coming from a small town and would always see interesting things that we didn’t see anywhere else but on game day at Mizzou.”
Those memories gave way to college years filled with shared friend groups, student life and even meeting and befriending each other’s future spouses.
“The university is a big part of our family’s history,” Todd Graves said. “It’s interwoven through our family for the past five generations.”
And the story continues to be written. Sam and Janice Graves are responsible for a dozen grandchildren who have attended or are still attending Mizzou.
“It’s been so fun to come back and get to experience it through them,” Johnson said, referring to her children, nieces and nephews. “I think maybe I just appreciate it more now.”
From sibling to role model
The Graves siblings might appreciate their brother now more, too. Today, they speak with a touch of disbelief about Todd Graves’ leadership role on the board of curators.
“He’s just a great person to look up to,” his younger brother, Danny Graves, said. “Being down here and seeing him in that role is amazing. I want my kids to see that you can be a farm boy from northwest Missouri, work hard and do the right thing, and then go wherever you want. Be whatever you want to be.”
For the family, that message isn’t just aspirational; it’s lived experience. Education changed their lives, just as it has for countless students who arrive at Mizzou unsure of the future. Here, the Graves family found space to grow and opportunities to rise to the occasion.
“Coming from a family farm gave us a work ethic,” Danny Graves said, his brother nodding beside him. “I wasn’t the best student in high school, but my work ethic became so much greater when I came down here. My dad always said, ‘You know, I wasn’t the best student when I was in high school, but when I went to the university, I really buckled down and I found myself.’ I feel like I followed in his footsteps that same way.”
These days, when Sam Graves visits campus, those footsteps are likely to make their way to the Columns.
“The Columns are just a part of us” Sam Graves said.
Todd Graves reminded him of Gideon F. Rothwell, the UM Board of Curators chair who agreed to preserve the Columns after a fire destroyed Academic Hall in 1892. Let the columns stand for a thousand years, Rothwell proclaimed.
“So, we’ve got about 865 more to go,” Todd Graves said.
“Yeah,” his father replied. “Well, we’ll make it.”
That kind of long view is how Todd Graves approaches his role as board chair. For him, ensuring Mizzou’s continued legacy means investing in the next chapter.“We have a real gem here,” he said. “The state loves this university, and we need to protect that. We need to pass it on to future generations stronger than we found it.”
