Alex Hildebrand was an engineer by training and a farmer by vocation. He had a lifetime filled with accomplishments ranging from serving on local school boards, and being a successful farmer, to being a past national president of the Sierra Club. But it was arguably his being one of the true students of California water issues that earned him respect from politicians in Sacramento to water experts up and down the state that gained him entrance into the Manteca Hall of Fame in 2007 in the field of agriculture.