"One Man With Courage" The Wayne Cryts Story
Jerry Hobbs, Author
A fifth generation farmer, Wayne Cryts finished
harvesting his crop in the fall of 1980 and hauled more than 32,000
bushels of soybeans to a nearby grain-storage facility. That decision
changed his life forever.
A few months later, the owners of the Ristine
Grain Elevator filed for bankruptcy. A federal judge in Little Rock,
Arkansas, got involved, declared it a federal bankruptcy case, and
took control over the company’s elevators in both Missouri and
Arkansas. He ordered all the grain stored in the elevators to be sold
as part of the assets of the facility owners.
Wayne and other farmers immediately protested
the decision, stating that the grain was their private property, and
they had state-issued warehouse receipts to prove it. But when the
judge refused to honor those receipts, it set the stage for a
modern-day version of David versus Goliath.