Man behind lawsuit a lifelong berry grower

The man whose lawsuit culminated in Tuesday’s $56 million verdict in favor of growers entered the wild blueberry business in a bassinet.

The parents of Nathan Pease Jr., 67, owned a farm and blueberry land in Hope, a Knox County town, and would bring their baby into the fields while they worked.

After growing up picking blueberries and winnowing them the old-fashioned way – by hand – Pease graduated from Camden High School in 1954. He served three years in the U.S. Army.

Pease’s parents sold the farm in the 1960s, but kept the blueberry land, his wife, Charlotte Pease, said. His parents later bought back the fields.

Nathan Pease and his sister ended up with the land, and eventually he bought her out.

Around 1970, Pease became an insurance agent and owned his own business, which he since has sold.

At the same time he was selling insurance, Pease ran the 25-acre blueberry business with his wife, children and grandchildren. The hard work of growing, picking, cleaning and delivering the berries to stores, bakeries and other local businesses got to be too much, Charlotte Pease said, and they sold the land in 2001. They now live in Union.

It wasn’t money that drove Nathan Pease to bring the suit.

His wife, in a telephone interview Tuesday, said he always felt growers were getting a “raw deal,” and he wanted to see them get “what’s due to them.”

“Everyone talked about it,” she said. “It was fear why nobody ever did anything.”

Her husband “put himself on the line for everybody else,” she said.