The Keynote Presenter

My goal when I spoke to the Fountain Park Chautauqua in Indiana on July 22 was to get the audience to say “I didn’t know that.” The title of the presentation was “Corn, Tomatoes, and Prisoners of War: Hoosier Agriculture During World War II.” During WWII 10% of the population in Indiana had joined the military or worked in war industries. This created a huge labor shortage in farming and food processing (Indiana was the leading tomato producing state in the country at this point in time). So what was the solution?

One solution was to use prisoner of war labor in agricultural operations in Indiana. There were nine prisoner of war camps in the state and the POW’s were farmed out (pun intended) to work on farms and in processing plants. The farmers paid the government fifty cents an hour for POW labor. ThePOWs detassled corn, picked tomatos, harvested potatoes, hoed corn, shocked wheat, filled silos and performed many other agricultural jobs. If it were not for the POW labor, many farms would have gone under.

Most of the prisoners of war were Geman boys 18-20 years old. Often strong bonds developed between the farmers and the POWs. Several years after the war was over, about 5,000 former German POWs returned to the United States.

The Italian POWs at Camp Atterbury south of Indianapolis built a chapel out of surplus building materials. It still stands today and is the only vestige that remains of the POW camp (see images below).

It was my pleasure to participate in a ZOOM workshop for agricultural education teachers today for Mt. Olive University. I spoke about the impact that Rufus Stimson, one of the pioneer leaders in agricultural education, made on agricultural education. He was responsible for the project method of teaching, introduced task analysis for curriculum development, promoted adult education in agriculture, advocated for advisory committees, and fought to get girls in the FFA in the 1930s. He also wrote several seminal books in agricultural education.

In April I enjoyed speaking at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at North Carolina State University. I discussed the life of the circuit rider preacher and then shared true stories gleaned from the journals the preachers kept and newspaper articles. Many were funny but some were sad. One circuit rider preacher was lynched in Fort Worth, Texas during the 1850s because he opposed slavery. I was surprised when one member of the audience admitted she had never heard of a circuit rider preacher. I will return to OLLI in September to teach about Boy’s Corn Clubs and Girl’s Tomato Clubs.

In recognition of Black History Month it was my pleasure to speak to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Raleigh last week on the topic “Booker T. Washington: Savior of His Race or Traitor?” We had a great discussion and the audience argued for and against the question posed in the title of the presentation.

I used electronic responders to engage the audience on a quiz about the life of Mr. Washington as we traveled through the PowerPoint slides. I wouldn’t call the slide below a trick question but 2/3 of the audience missed it. George Washington Carver was the scientist at Tuskegee recognized for his peanut research, not Booker T. Washington.

I will have to admit I was a little leery about accepting a speaking invitation in Indiana in January. After surviving six Indiana winters from 1976-1982 when I was a faculty member at Purdue University, I had an idea about what the weather could be like. However, the opportunity to speak with agriculture teachers and students about managing priorities in life and developing leadership skills won out.

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking at the 10^th Annual FFA Leadership Summit sponsored by Huntington University in Huntington, Indiana this past Thursday. The audience was receptive and the weather was not that cold, but was foggy.

I took a side trip to Syracuse, Indiana to learn more about Chautauqua Wawasee. This is a relatively new Chautauqua. While make this trip I passed a large herd of children’s’ rocking horses. Luckily I was not caught in the stampede.

It was a pleasure discussing priority management with the North Carolina State University REAL (Rurally Engaged Agricultural Leaders) last week. Most people might say the topic was about time management but we can’t really manage time. However, we can identify and establish priorities for our lives and careers and then make decisions as to how to spend our time based on this information.

It is nice to take a deep breath! I made four (or 5) presentations last week depending upon how you count them. The Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) along with the National Association of Agricultural Educators (NAAE) meet in Phoenix, Arizona. The presentations were:

• Bitter or Better: Eight Steps to Becoming a Resilient Teacher – Dr. Wendy Warner and I teamed up for this presentation to the NAAE.

• “C” You at the Top – Lessons in leadership, presented to both the NAAE and ACTE.

• I Hated Small Group Work Until… – presented to ACTE.

• On Your Deathbed Will You Wished You Had Trained on More CDE Team? – Presented to the NAAE.

After the conference I spent three days exploring Arizona. I visited Native American ruins, national parks and monuments, a copper mine, and Tombstone. Since I often speak about outhouses it was interesting to see the sanitation device that replaces outhouses in the copper mine (see below). Another whew!

It is always fun to speak to the Pamlico County Historical Association in Grantsboro, NC. Last night I spoke about the History and Evolution of the Outhouse. The audience was comprised primarily of senior citizens who had grown up in this very rural county in North Carolina. Thus, they were well acquainted with the subject matter. At the end of the presentation I asked the audience to share true stories of their experiences with outhouses. Some of the stories were hilariously funny.

I made the same presentation last week to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at North Carolina State University and received the same reaction.

I was honored to be invited to speak at the 150th Anniversary of the Grange in Pennsylvania. If you don’t know about the Grange it is a rural oriented organization started soon after the Civil War in an attempt to improve the plights of farmers and reunify the country after the war. Washington State and Pennsylvania have the largest number of Granges. I made two presentations. I was the keynoter at the banquet and assumed the role of the Wizard of Oz. My main points were:

The next morning I assumed the role of Oliver Hudson Kelley, the founder of the Grange and described whey the Grange was needed then, and why it is needed now.

This past week I defied the message in Thomas Wolfe’s novel, You Can’t Go Home Again. I did go home – to Lampasas, Texas to speak at the annual Lampasas County Farm Bureau Convention. I grew up in Lampasas and graduated from Lampasas High School. So it was a thrill and honor to be asked to return home to speak to the Farm Bureau. I enjoyed visiting with people I knew 50 years ago and meeting new friends. My presentation was “Myths and Misconceptions About Modern Agriculture: Insights from the Wizard of Oz.” Of course I was dressed as the Wizard of Oz.