Over my years as a country editor I had occasion to write dozens of stories about vocational agriculture and the Future Farmers of America.
As a former FFA chapter reporter, I naturally gravitated toward those topics. One of the first things I learned, though, was how different they were from my high school experiences just a few years earlier.
Vo-ag at Fair Grove was kind of wild and wooly in my day, not at all like what I saw in the Polk and Dallas County chapters in the late 1970s and beyond. For one thing, FFA in its first 40 years was strictly a boys club, but we weren’t exactly Boy Scouts.
In those days vo-ag was a four-year program with no options, other than take it or leave it. I don’t recall the specific focus for each year, but freshman ag was always two hours at the beginning of the day. That provided ample time for field trips to local farms. I don’t know how it’s done today, but in my day we all piled in the back of Mr. Guy Henson’s stock truck, hootin’ and hollerin’ all the way to each farm. One day we learned to dock lambs’ tails; on another we toured a grade A dairy, and at another a large layer barn.
As you might imagine, every trip was brightened by some sort of mischief. We found no use for lambs’ tails, but left the chicken houses with coat pockets full of eggs – which we scrambled on highway signs and the windshield of Mr. Henson’s truck.
At another location, one of our group let the air out of his truck tires. I think that may have been what put an end to our field trips.
With my sophomore year we had a new teacher, Mr. Stephen B. Wilson. He must not have had a stock truck, because he hauled us to FFA contests in his 1959 Chevy station wagon or got us a proper school bus.
A U.S. Air Force veteran and reserve officer, Mr. Wilson imposed on us a new degree of discipline and organization. We never let the air out of his tires.
Much better behaved in our sophomore and subsequent years, we traveled to Purina Farms in St. Louis, the National FFA Convention in Kansas City and all over the area for judging contests.
I’d say we started to resemble today’s FFA; but it was still a boys club.
We had only one girl take vo-ag, but she could not be an FFA member. Girls weren’t allowed in until 1969 – four years after I graduated.
My first encounter with girls in FFA blue and gold was as a newspaper editor, and my first impression was “it’s about time.”
In my experience, the girls were the most reliable sources of information for our annual FFA Week section. It was no surprise that they quickly ascended to leadership roles. Without them we couldn’t have given FFA the press it deserved.
I’ve no doubt that girls are the best thing that ever happened to FFA. The National FFA website reports girls account for 44 percent of the organization’s membership and hold half of state leadership positions.
Not only in FFA, but at the front of the classroom women have an equal role in vocational ag education. I know several from our area who became ag teachers.
That probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to later generations, but to mine it’s huge.
I never would have imagined a “Mrs. Wilson” hauling us to the FFA convention, or girls with us on Mr. Henson’s stock truck tours.
Thankfully FFA and vo-ag today are not a boys club, and without the ladies I hazard to say we would be half what we are.
FFA isn’t what it used to be. The ladies made it and we boys much better.
A former feature writer for Ozarks Farm and Neighbor, Jim Hamilton is a retired newspaper editor/publisher. Hamilton was reared on a small dairy farm in Dallas County, Mo. Contact Jim at [email protected].
