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Social - June 2002 |
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Retired agent’s 4H roots run deep After a career of helping youngsters grow: By DIANE TURBYFILL, LTN Staff Writer June 7, 2002 - Carolyn Goodwin is a life-long 4H-er. And though she’s vacated her county Extension Service office, her devotion to the organization continues. “I’ve been in 4H all my life. I started when I was 10-years-old,” she says. “When I went to school, I went to be a 4H agent.” She reached that goal. And, now after 26 years on the job, Carolyn Goodwin has retired from her days of coordinating events and projects for 4H — a youth education branch of the Cooperative Extension Service, a U.S. Department of Agriculture program. She’s gone but not forgotten. The 58-year-old woman grins when telling the tale of a recent encounter with 4H-ers. After retiring in April, Carolyn missed 4H Activity Day for the first time in years — “When you leave something, you need to step back,” she decided. — but she was still present in spirit. “I thought about them all day.” And they were thinking about her. As she sat at home wondering how the youngsters had fared in competition, her thoughts were broken by the sight of a vehicle pulling up the gravel drive to her Vale home. She was amazed as friends and 4H students piled out to drop off a retirement gift — a truckload of plants. “They came and they installed an instant garden,” she says. “They call it a meditation garden.” The area beside her driveway is now mulched and sprouting with green foliage, complete with yard art and a bench positioned perfectly under a tree. And though she admits to not having a green thumb, Carolyn’s working on it. She gives tours of her new meditation garden, attempting to get all the plant names correct. She laughs while sharing the planting lessons she’s learned so far — the best times to water, which plants like shade and which prefer sunlight. Around the corner from her meditation garden, Carolyn has been putting in time on a vegetable garden — her first. She enthusiastically points out her a successfully grown cucumber. “Another day and I’ll eat it.” The small garden is flourishing with tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and the like. Next year she plans to tackle asparagus, with help from Kevin Starr, county Extension director. Carolyn enjoys time in the garden and the healthy rewards it yields. Diet is especially important to Carolyn, a diabetic Retirement, she believes, has benefited her condition as she spends more time preparing meals for herself and husband, Doug and has time for a long daily walk. Some of her downtime is spent in her front porch rocking chair, reading mysteries with dogs Wags and Dixie at her feet. Carolyn also has been spending more time with her parents, Ralph and Kathleen Heavner, making ice cream with them, cleaning for them and just visiting. Carolyn says she misses the people from her office, yet is thankful for quality time at home — and away. A trip to Alaska is now in the planning stages. “I’m doing things that I’ve never done before,” she says. “I don’t know how I had time to work.”
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© 2001 Lincoln Times-News |
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