News came last week of the death of Calvin L. Beale. Yeah, you had to look closely for the notice.

Mr. Beale worked more than half a century at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a faceless bureaucrat in a deep bureaucracy. Not exactly sensational in the “Hardball” way of things in Washington.

Yet for some people in and outside of government, and especially among a corps of disciples in the demography community, he stood as something of a Yoda figure.

A master of numbers, Mr. Beale also recognized nuance. He believed the thinking of the cubicle-bound did an injustice to reason.

So, according to news accounts last week, the Ag Department lifer traveled to 2,500 American counties, roughly 80 percent of them. Mr. Beale held a special affinity for the backwoods areas that he made a specialty.

The demographer became a groundbreaker in proposing in the 1960s that rural population, historically shrinking as the nation’s agrarian past bled into an industrial age, might be due for a comeback.

He saw from the numbers, but he also saw in the field, that rural America was experiencing a life-preserving change. He noted that dams that create lakes in blue-highway outbacks allow for tourism and population resurgence.

In his writings, Mr. Beale specifically cited Missouri’s lake regions, where homes sprang up for people to take advantage of leisurely weekends, sunny days on a boat and close-to-home vacations.

There would also be room for country-music theaters and theme parks. In the unavoidable language of federal reporting, a map shows “non-metro retirement destination counties,” broad blue blotches of prosperity in the southern stretches of Missouri.

History would have had such areas swept by blowing sagebrush. Instead, a renaissance arose.

This remains a tricky business with rural development. How do you maintain a way of life while, by necessity, moving into the future? How do you keep young people near their country roots without adequate jobs in proximity?

What perpetuates a rural existence when inertia sends the population elsewhere?

When settlers came to the place that would become Missouri, it had land to be cleared and rivers to be crossed and extreme weather to be endured.

The rural folks managed.

It’s not like the progeny of these hearty souls can’t overcome demographic trends.

Small towns in Northwest Missouri have their share of problems. But look at what’s being done with an eye to the future.

There are factories making alternative fuels, ethanol and biodiesel, giving new and nearby markets for crops raised by the region’s farmers. Their formation of cooperatives gives them a direct hand in dictating an economic uptick.

And the horizon in a few of the northern counties is lined with giant wind turbines, creating renewable energy from what has always been there. Never assume the green revolution must take place elsewhere.

News accounts said Mr. Beale tested his demographic theories from the ground up. That probably means he understood the people behind the numbers, knew their capacity for resourcefulness when problems arose.

If those he mentored at the Agriculture Department carry forward his devotion to the rural parts of this nation, they may see more interesting changes in the years to come.

Ken Newton’s column runs on Tuesday and Sunday.