John Goodman, Elizabeth Tuttle, J.I. Wagoner Honored by USDA, 1953

From Extension Farm-News, May 1953

Three North Carolina Extension workers have been chosen to receive Department of Agriculture Superior Service Awards—the second highest departmental honor that USDA employees can receive.

John W. Goodman, assistant Extension director; Mrs. Elizabeth L. Tuttle, Forsyth County home demonstration agent; and J.I. Wagoner, Guilford County farm agent, were scheduled to receive the awards from Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson at the Sylvan Theatre on the Washington Monument grounds May 19.

Last year 15 Extension workers from 13 states received Superior Service awards; 120 persons from throughout the USDA were so honored. The awards consist of a silver medal, a certificate, and a silver lapel emblem.

Since 1935, Goodman has been charged with helping obtain money for North Carolina Extension expenditures and then seeing that it is carefully and equally distributed. A letter of nomination for the award states, “The Extension Service owes a debt to Mr. Goodman for the long hours he has spent each biennium in preparing a budget for consideration by the State Legislature….”

Goodman, a native of Cumberland, Va., and a graduate of VPI, came to North Carolina as a count agent in Avery on August 1, 1919. He later served Extension as Western District agent.

Mrs. Tuttle has been home agent in Forsyth since 1931 when there were 14 home demonstration clubs with 273 members and three 4-H Clubs with 76 girls enrolled in the county. Today there are 32 home demonstration clubs with a membership of more than 900, and 20 4-H Clubs with 950 girls enrolled.

In 1948, the Winston-Salem Journal-Sentinal newspapers named her the city’s outstanding woman in community work. That year she also received a distinguished service award from the National Home Demonstration Agents Association. She has held office and served as an active member in an impressive number of service organizations, both rural and urban. In 1950-51 she was president of the State Home Demonstration Agents Association.

Mrs. Tuttle served as home economics teacher at the Walnut Cove High School, 1925-26, and at Walkertown, 1926-31.

Wagoner, a 1919 graduate of State College, became Guilford County farm agent in 1924. Within a year he organized the first county board of agriculture in the State’s history. The board is still functioning and many counties have patterned similar organizations after this one. He is the father of the Guilford Dairy Heard Improvement Association which now has 1,214 cows under the program. He helped organize the Guilford Dairy Cooperative in 1931; the cooperative does a $3 million business each year.