Logan County
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Cooperative Extension - Logan County

July 6, 2002

Steve Cramer
scramer@coop.ext.colostate.edu  
Extension Agent
Youth/Horticulture

 

4-H CENTENNIAL  CELEBRATION July 8, 2002

Join us in this year’s “CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION” by recognizing third and fourth generational 4-H families at the 4-H/FFA BBQ, sponsored by Premier Farm Credit, Horizon COOP, and Peetz Farmers COOP at noon on Sunday August 11.

Nationally 4-H, a 100 percent, made-in-America youth movement, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. It*s trying to get the message out that 4-H isn't just corn, cows and cooking anymore. It's also model rocketry and computer, photography and food & nutrition.. 4-H isn't just on farms either, as there are clubs in suburbia and even cities.

How 4-H was launched, and who launched it, is in dispute. Some link the modem-day clubs to late l9th century agricultural reformers like Cornell University's Liberty Hyde Bailey, one of the founders of modern horticulture.

Others contend the 4-H movement grew out of efforts by hybrid-corn manufacturers in Illinois who found ways of advertising the advantages of their seeds to reluctant farmers by creating “corn clubs” of youngsters who would experiment with hybrid corn at home to demonstrate to their parents the results they might get if they switched to the new seed.

Ohio insists that 4-H clubs was the brainchild of Arthur Graham, a Springfield, Ohio school superintendent who gathered some 85 children ranging in age from 10 to 15 in the basement of the local courthouse on Jan. 15, 1902. They studied food preservation, testing for soil acidity and growing corn and potatoes.

Within three years there were 20 clubs in the state with 1,038 members. Today, there are about 8 million school-aged children involved in 4-H clubs in the United States plus an estimated 2 million more in 63 other countries.

Among 4-H alumni are Dolly Parton, Sissy Spacek, Reba McEntire, “Garfield” cartoonist Jim Davis, Olympic gold-medal wrestler Rulan Gardner and Olympic track-and-field star Stacy Dragila.

In 1952, Ohio persuaded U.S. postal officials to print a 50-year anniversary stamp commemorating Graham as the father of 4-H, which is why 2002 was picked as the official centennial of the clubs.

4-H started out as three H's. In his 1904 annual report, Graham wrote that “not only must provision be made for the three R's, but for the three H*s as well: the head for wealth of information and knowledge, the heart for moral and spiritual strength and the hand for manual dexterity.”

A fourth H — for “hustle” — was added in 1908, but changed to “health” in 1911 when the club's official green four-leaf clover emblem was adopted.

Note: Contact the Extension Office at 522-3200 Extension 0 by July 26, if you have any 4-H families that should be recognized.

(Source: Doug Steele, Asst. Director, 4-H/Youth Development)

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