While most of my presentations are of interest to wide audiences, there are times when I return to my academic roots and make a research presentation designed for university professors of agricultural education. That is what I did last week in Charleston, SC.
In 1947, one of the giants of the agricultural education profession – Rufus Stimson died (photo to the right). At the time of his death, he was compiling a book containing biographical sketches and photos of the early leaders in the field. The book was never published. I spent 10 years searching for the missing manuscript. I even went to his retirement home on Cape Cod searching for this manuscript. To make a long story short, I eventually found the manuscript in the attic of the FFA Center in Alexandria, Virginia.
In my presentation, I told the story about the search for the manuscript, shared some Stimson artifacts that I obtained during my search (such as his typewriter), and revealed for the first time ever, the identity of 180 people who had been identified as the early pioneers of agricultural education. During the presentation, I passed out pages of the lost manuscript to the audience so they could see what was found. The image to the right is the biographical sketch of Booker T. Washington. There were 180 pages like this in the manuscript.
