People helping people...Clara Green

By NOREEN HYSLOP

Managing Editor

BLOOMFIELD, Mo. -- Clara Green has a favorite quote from Dr. Seuss that reads, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not!"

In a few short weeks, Clara Green will step down after more than 37 years of work with the Stoddard County Extension Office, ending her career as a 4-H Youth Specialist and County Program Director. For nearly four decades, she has applied the wisdom of Dr. Seuss in her daily task of working with youth not only in Stoddard County, but within a four-county area that includes Mississippi, Pemiscot and New Madrid as well.

Clara Green has cared not just a little -- but a whole awful lot -- as she has gone about the task of inspiring youth to do their best in the area of 4-H since the mid-1970s.

Of her career, she says, "I consider myself a product of Extension -- people helping people."

Cleaning out her office within the confines of the old Stoddard County Courthouse, she explains, "I say that because through the education I pursued as a result of being in this position, the Extension staff made me who I am."

Her task for more than 37 years, Green says, has been to take the resources made available through the Missouri Extension office and get them out to the people who need them as she's worked with youth in the realm of 4-H.

Green has worn a lot of hats during her tenure with the Extension office in Bloomfield. Appointed by the Stoddard County Commission in 2005, she has served on the Bootheel DAEOC Regional Board of Directors for the Public Sector. As a member of their board, she has served on the Planning and Evaluation Committee, as well as the Audit, Finance, Head Start, and Conflict Committees.

As liaison to the Stoddard County Fair Board, she has served on the Entertainment, Livestock, Fair Book, Fair Board scholarship and By-laws Committees.

Green also serves on the Southeast Regional CERT Team, and is a Southeast Blue Ribbon Program Trainer, now 4-H Access, which puts her in the position of maintaining 4-H member information and reporting pertinent data to the state office.

Her presence is also on the Missouri Citizenship In Action Planning Committee, the Missouri 4-H Camp Summit Committee, and the Southeast Regional Staff Allocation Committee, and she represents the Southeast Region 4-H Staff on the Program Planning and Advisory Committee, a position she's held since 2008.

As if those appointments are not enough to keep the 62-year-old busy, Green also holds membership in two organizations that serve 4-H youth workers across Missouri and the country to obtain professional growth and development.

In her day-to-day business as 4-H Youth Specialist, Green has consistently worked with youth throughout the area to help prepare them to be responsible, productive adults through implementing the tenants of the 4-H program which aim at helping America's youth to gain valuable academic, leadership, and life skills and create opportunities as they take on challenging responsibilities in community service projects and more.

She has accompanied youth from the area to countless competitions, workshops and panels in Columbia and Jefferson City, including Teen Conferences, State 4-H Conferences, Citizen Workshops, Heartland 4-H camps and the Annual State 4-H Congress in Columbia on the University of Missouri campus.

She recalls one of several trips to Washington, D.C. when she accompanied a group of high school students. With time to spare one day while there, she suggested they leave the busy city and go view the Atlantic.

"I don't think any of the kids on the trip had ever seen the ocean," she explains. "I told them the ocean was a little different than the Mississippi River! Seeing them experience that for the first time in their lives was one of the best parts of that trip for me."

"It has been a wonderful experience," Green says, "to watch these kids grow and learn and develop, many in leadership roles within their communities. That's one of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of this position."

Oddly, Clara Green was not a product of the 4-H program herself.

"Back in those days, 4-H was only for the farm kids," she laughs from her office chair, surrounded by decades of framed accolades. "And I lived in town."

"That's one of the biggest changes I've seen over the years," she says. "These days they say, '4-H ain't all cows and cookin'!'"

Clara began her career with the Missouri Extension office in her 20s, performing secretarial duties at first. In 1976 she was assigned the duty of Programs Secretary for the newly established Small Farm Family Program, a program that is no longer in existence. She was armed with only a high school diploma and a desire to learn. With encouragement from the Extension office staff, she enrolled a few years later at Three Rivers College in Poplar Bluff and eventually earned an Associate degree in the field of Education while holding down the Extension position and raising two small boys. As a non-traditional student in the mid-80s, she furthered her studies at Southeast Missouri State University, completing a Bachelor and then a Master's degree in Human Environmental Studies.

With the advancement in technology in recent years, much of Clara's workload has been altered.

"I do a lot of emailing, texting, and faxing information now that used to require me being in the field a lot more," she explains.

Overseeing a four-county area still requires considerable time on the road, however - an aspect of the job she won't miss.

At the time Clara accepted the position at the Missouri Extension office in Bloomfield in 1974, she and husband Glenn had two small boys. A third child, a daughter named Kelly, came after a few years on the job.

Those children are now grown with children of their own. One son, Kevin, is a Major in the U.S. Air Force. The couple's other son, Keith, serves as a detective with the Cape County Police. Their daughter works in Probation and Parole in Butler County.

"They've grown up to be very good people," Clara says of her three children. "And they readily credit their experiences in 4-H with that."

The Greens live about eight miles outside of Puxico in Stoddard County, where they raise cattle, sheep and goats. Her husband has plans to retire at the end of the year from a position at Faurecia, where he has spent more than 30 years.

"I look forward to doing nothing for a little while," Clara says of what's ahead. "But there are a lot of projects at home that I'll get into, and I'll be able to spend more time helping Glenn on the farm."

Travel, too, is on the horizon for the Greens.

"On all those 4-H trips across the state of Missouri, I'd see so many interesting little places I wanted to stop, and I couldn't because I had a carload of kids and a tight schedule. I plan on making some of those stops now."

Clara Green will be honored with a retirement reception on Sunday, Sept. 9, 2012, at the Stoddard County Extension Office, located in the old County Courthouse in Bloomfield from 2 until 4 p.m. The public is invited to attend.