Faces of Extension: Lindy Taggart

I am on the 4-H camp committee for Shakitunk. The camp will have housed campers for 100 years next summer, so we've been going through some of the history, which I just can't get enough of.

My dad was the youngest of three boys, and lived on a dairy farm in the town of Hamden. His brothers were nine and 11 years older than him. Their social life was the church, which was right across the road. They went to a one-room schoolhouse a half a mile away, and didn't go to the village of Walton, where they would have had to pay tuition because it wasn't their town. But after my dad finished eighth grade at the country school, he came to town and boarded with an aunt during the week so he could go to high school and graduate.

He and, his dad and brothers, had planted a stand of pines on the farm. I had been told that my dad attended camp Shakitunk his first year as a guest because his brother was a counselor here, possibly in 1927, before officially attending as a camper in 1928. Mr. Lennox, who was the camp's 4-H agent at the time, was really into forestry, so he sought my dad out during that visit and talked to him about the stand of pines they'd planted back home. My dad never forgot it, being singled out by someone like a county agent when he was just an eight-year-old who hadn't really traveled too far.

My dad always loved trees, so when he passed, my sisters and I built a memorial for him at Camp Shakitunk. He was born in 1920, so a lot of buildings were being built out of chestnut wood because of the trees' decline from the blight, which hit when he was a child. He always hoped he could bring them back, so we planted Chinese and American chestnuts here in his memory. There's a stone wall, too. He grew up on a farm with a quarry and built a house on land with a quarry. So, one of my jobs is to weed whack around that stuff here, and sometimes around other buildings too.

It's my favorite organization of all, because it's so varied. You can paint a picture for a 4-H project, make a quilt, plant a garden, rebuild a car. There are so many different projects you can do, which I think makes kids more well-rounded.

A few weeks ago, our church got the village to close off the street and invited kids from other churches. The most popular game was Four Square, which all these kids had learned here at 4-H camp—it wasn't even a game when I was here. But it bonded these kids together from different churches, since they'd all learned it through camp.

And 4-H still includes some elements organization based on parliamentary procedure. And it doesn't matter if you're from a lot of money or not much money at all—there's always a project that can be done. A lot of clubs work on community service, hands-on, whether it's washing windows at stores downtown or painting a mural on a building wall. No matter what your economic worth is, you're equal.

My mom was on the executive board for 4-H for a while, and there was a woman named Clara Stewart who worked for 4-H. She had grown up as a farm girl and understood this farmland. Sometimes people in the community could be a little too fancy, a bit critical about the homespun, farmish ways of 4-H, and I admired that she had a really good way of telling them they weren't any better.

I was so impressed by her involvement and all the history she knew that for years I'd say to people, "When I grow up, I want to be a Clara Stewart." She passed away within the last year or two.

I was selected for this award, so they must think I'm a good volunteer, though I don't really know if I am. I think it's about visiting and talking with people, maybe remembering a kid who did a 4-H presentation you judged, and years later saying, "Oh, I remember you making a doorstop," or whatever it was.

It's been fun to know so many people from Deposit to Stanford, which is a fairly long distance. I can say, "I remember you from 4-H years ago," or "I saw you a few months ago at a 4-H event." I think that's probably what I selfishly like the most, the interaction with people. It always starts out as a great conversation piece, 4-H.

I think it represents the involvement I've had, not just in 4-H, but in other community service too. My husband and I were married 47 years. He's passed away now, and he would sometimes remind me that I needed to stay home occasionally, since it seemed like I always had a meeting somewhere. But he was also very active with the kids in 4-H.

I'm involved in Eastern Star and with our church, and I'm on a few scholarship committees, since I've lived in the same town for 73 years. Not that you always agree with everybody at these meetings, but for the most part, it's been a wonderful opportunity to meet so many different people, through Eastern Star, people around the state, and through 4-H, people around the county. It's just been a fun ride.