Farmers, ethanol industry honor Loos with scholarships

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — For over three decades, David Loos was on the frontlines advocating for the development and expansion of the ethanol industry in Illinois.

After he died unexpectedly on April 13, individuals and organizations teamed up to create education funds for his grandchildren in honor of the ethanol pioneer and advocate for farmers.

His family was presented with those scholarships at the recent Illinois Corn Growers Association annual meeting.

Loos began working as IL Corn’s technology and business development director in 2007 and became the organization’s director of biofuels and research in 2019. Prior to that, he worked at the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources.

“He was very technical in knowledge. He was an engineer, a graduate of the University of Illinois. He loved working with the automobile mechanics. He loved working with petroleum folks. He understood refining capacity. He had just a really very technical mind,” said Rodney Weinzierl, IL Corn executive director.

“He loved communicating and getting to know people in other sectors of the economy. So, when he passed away, it created a big hole, not only for his family, but also the corn family and the ethanol family.

“So, we stepped back, trying to figure out what can we do to help the family going into the future.”

The idea came about to create education funds for his grandchildren.

“This would be something then that they would have that puts them on a good trajectory down the road from an educational standpoint for advanced learning or advanced degrees, but it also is something then that they remember their grandfather and that a lot of people really appreciated everything he did for them,” Weinzierl said.

Contributions flowed in from a broad range of individuals and organizations — a tribute to Loos’ legacy.

“We had a lot of farmers, members, past leaders, other state corn organizations contribute and we had a lot of ethanol plants contribute,” Weinzierl said.

“Dave was involved in almost every ethanol plant in Illinois, actually helping them get started. He did that in his career when he worked for the state of Illinois, and they remembered that, and there were a lot of entities in Washington, D.C., that he also worked with on different policy things that we were trying to build partnerships with.”

Enough donations were received to set up $16,651 scholarships for each of his three grandchildren and an additional scholarship in the same amount was established for another grandchild in the future.