Could There Be Something Special in 4-H?

Board of Chosen Freeholders meetings are usually bland. The business of government is, for the most part, dull and boring. While the public’s work is being conducted, there is little room for emotion. Resolutions and contract changes are not the stuff that makes one’s heart flutter or causes tears to well up in the eyes.
The afternoon session on June 28 was a bit different. Maybe bittersweet would be accurate, at least for Freeholder Ralph Sheets Jr. and 4-H Agent Betty Jean Webersinn. For Sheets, it is the last 4-H Fair he will enjoy as a “sitting” freeholder. For Webersinn, it’s her last 4-H Fair, since she will retire after 41 years with Cooperative Extension, 37 here in Cape May County. To many, both are embodiment of 4-H tradition here.
The meeting was the last before the Cape May County 4-H Fair, July 21-22-23. That meant, by tradition, a group of young 4-H members would step to the podium and tell freeholders a bit about 4-H or their club, and they did.
This year’s club was the Wranglers 4-H Club that represented the county’s youth, and they did an excellent job. These are, after all, youngsters standing before the county’s top elected officials. Some adults would suffer dry mouth standing there, not those young people. But then, that’s one of the things 4-H has been known to do for shy boys and girls; it polishes and prepares them for bigger things in life.
Sheets, 80, waxed sentimental as he recalled first joining 4-H 70 years ago. That was a time in the county, he said, when dairy farms abounded, and much of what is now developed was fields that raised such simple crops as lima beans and corn.
After his recollection, a photo session followed with the youngsters and the board. Over to one side was Webersinn. She smiled, as she usually does, even when things are not going as planned. She has a grasp of life and what’s important, as do few people. My bet is she will continue working with young people long after her retirement.
“B.J.” as she is known to many, is what every youth leader can aspire to mirror, always positive, ready to help, with a listening ear and a caring shoulder for consolation.
How many memories swirled through her head as she stood with the Wranglers? How many photos has been in 37 years, pitching the 4-H program or the chicken barbecue?
Getting her replacement may take some time, especially if Rutgers University and the county are to find a person who will do what she did. The job description takes up a full page in small type. That’s an indication of what she does, and really, that isn’t the half of it.
Those who possess the job’s qualifications, educationally, must read between the lines: an agent’s job is not a 40-hour-a-week job, it is a lifestyle career, one that doesn’t start on Monday at 9 a.m. and end on Friday at 5 p.m.
It’s the non-taxable part of the job that makes it worthwhile, it’s the portion the tax man cannot touch, like watching shy youngsters take their first faltering steps on Presentation Night, when dry mouth is a common affliction, into seeing those same young teens, after a few short years, become self-confident ambassadors, unfazed by speaking before a crowd.
Sheets, too, standing with the youngsters, probably recalled a farm boy who never dreamed he would one day be a Wildwood police chief, then a mayor of that city, and then, for the last 21 years, a freeholder, holding the office of vice director.
With his law enforcement background, Sheets had the ability to oversee the county’s training of young police recruits. He told of how he and some caring police officers pitched in, with his tractor and backhoe, and cleared the ground that today is the Cape May County Public Safety Training Center. It is there, on Crest Haven Road, that police cadets are trained for careers that take them to many places.
Center Director Tony Saduk and Sheriff Gary Schaffer told freeholders how Sheets’ influence had been instrumental in molding their careers in law enforcement.
Both noted how Sheets’ calm nature and demeanor first inspired them to follow in their career paths.
Not often have I seen a freeholder shed a tear, but Sheets quickly wiped his eyes after the pair presented him with a plague that bore a badge and extolled his life of caring in the law enforcement field.
As a former 4-H member and former club leader, I had to wonder if there was a correlation between that farm boy’s 4-H membership and the impact on at least those two law enforcement leaders. The beneficial effects could not be denied, so I have to believe there is really something that young people can gain by being a 4-H member.
Sheets mentioned, too, that of all the 4-H members he had known, very few, if any, turned out bad. Now that is really saying something from an octogenarian’s vantage.