Thank you to Sara Bredesen for sharing this awesome retrospective about her family’s experience in Rock County 4-H! This piece was written in 2011 to celebrate National 4-H Week.

National 4-H week is Oct. 2-8, so it was a happy coincidence when I found some memorable photographs while helping clean my mother’s house in Beloit recently.

From deep in the cubbyholes and storage closets, my siblings and I unearthed a treasure trove of old photographs of family camping trips, Christmas photo out-takes, assorted dogs and cats that grew up with us, construction shots that showed the old house on Riverside Drive as it metamorphosed from Greek Revival to Modern, and half-familiar faces with no names attached.

One face, however, jumped into my memory with a blast of warm fuzzies. It was a man standing in the half-dark near a campfire with lots of small faces surrounding him. It was Al Finger, the Rock County 4-H Youth and Extension Agent at some outdoor event back in the 1960s. The fact that I could remember Al’s name out of the zillions of people I have met over the years just points out the place that 4-H took in my young life.

The pictures tell it all. One is of my sister Sue with the family dog “Goldie” sitting bored at her heel. Goldie was a decidedly old dog learning new tricks in the dog project, but she got a blue ribbon.

There are several shots of me as a chubby little cowgirl with an equally chubby Welch pony named Kooky. I remember the horse project leader commending me for wrapping his legs for trailering to the fair in Janesville. What she didn’t know was that the trailer had no shocks, and I was just trying to keep him in one piece for the trip.

There are tons of pictures of my sister Barbara and her sewing projects. In some she is alone with outfits on hangers. In others she has dressed up one or the other of her siblings or Mom ready to go on the runway for the dreaded Style Review. I learned to step-step-step-pivot-and-rock-back-on-one-heel-repeat-to-the-left-repeat-to-the-right before I was 7 years old.

I remember one year Barb found basting stitches still running down the front of my bodice minutes before her face-to-face with the judge. She frantically picked them out by hand as our turn ticked closer.

Most years, all the girls spent the drive to check-in day hemming the last of our projects. It became a family tradition of sorts to be hemming a formal gown minutes before our prom dates arrived. I even saved six inches of my wedding dress to finish just before I walked down the aisle to be married.
There are pictures of my mother and the art project members she invited to our house for drawing lessons. My mom, Carolyn Thomson, started the 4-H Fine Art project in Wisconsin under the direction of Al Finger and leaders in the Madison office.

The camping pictures remind me that we had to have our project books completed before the family could leave on its annual trip around the Great Lakes, which had to be squeezed between the end of the fair and the start of school. I personally balked at the idea of spending time inside instead of on the horse, but everything was dutifully signed and delivered to the county office every August like clock-work.

Some of the pictures of 4-H are just in my head, like my brother David bent over tiny squares of copper and glass crystals as he created jewelry in a little kiln. He played with electricity as a project and even became quite an accomplished clothes maker, although I think he learned sewing from watching his sisters rather than a project.

Younger brother Dan spent several years in 4-H too, but I’m a little foggy as to what projects caught his fancy.

Someplace in the photo box there must be pictures of all of us at Camp Upham Woods in Wisconsin Dells. I remember the day I was severely chastised for forgetting to pick up my “buddy badge” from the swimming board and almost caused a search and rescue of the river.

Here’s a piece of interesting 4-H trivia: Back when I recited the motto at the beginning of our meetings, it ended with “my country.” The motto now extends appropriately to the whole world as members learn practical project skills as well as the confidence to take them much farther than ever before.

So here it is for National 4-H Week:
“I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service and my health to better living for my club, my community, my country…and my world.”