North Carolina Western District 4-H Leadership Conference, 1956

“Western District 4-H Leadership Conference,” from the August 1956 issue of Extension Farm-News. Look at the photographs. They may be calling it camp, but there are no shorts to be seen.

Staff member Jean Shields prepares name tags for delegates who register. Avery County delegates include Bill Biggs, Tommy Norman and Niel Stewart.

Margurite Shook’s class interests both 4-H’ers and also Jackson County Agent Paul Gibson.

Staffer Bob “Oink” Carter directs delegates in “mixer” games at evening recreation sessions.

The camp staff posed Saturday morning after final sessions of the week long conference.

Good food made 4-H’ers happy.

Only a week of camping seems all too short to tired but enthusiastic 4-H’ers as they leave for home.

Highlighting a week of intensive leadership activities, a formal banquet and dance on Friday night, August 17, closed the second annual 4-H Leadership Conference for the western extension district. The meeting was held August 13 through 18 at the 4-H Camp at Swannanoa.

Seventy-five boys and girls representing the 15 counties of the western district met in this week-long camping program designed to improve their understanding of themselves and others and to improve their ability to work with other club members.

Miss Joan Crawford of Clay county told the delegates how she and other delegates at last year’s conference had returned to the county and cooperated with Cherokee and Graham counties to hold a leadership weekend patterned on the one held at Swannanoa.

Miss Crawford, Helen Cochran of Macon county, and Floyd McCall of Transylvania county were on scholarships granted by Sears to attend this year’s meeting as members of the camp staff.

G.L. Carter Jr., assistant state 4-H club leader, said that the program avoided emphasis on competitive sports usually associated with summer camp programs in an effort to provide the boys and girls with experiences which they could not receive in their home communities.

Out of state members of the instructional staff were Gordon Jones, 4-H recreation leader for the Indiana Extension Service at Purdue University, and Miss Emmie Nelson, National Committee on Boys and Girls Club Work, Bill Miller, program coordinator for the John C. Campbell folk school, led discussions on leadership and directed craft game making.

Western District Home Agent Miss Mary Harris said that the entire instructional staff, which included many of the district’s farm and home agents as well as personnel from North Carolina State College, was one of the most outstanding groups of workers ever to work with the boys and girls of the western district.

W.B. Collins, western district farm agent, stated that each of the 15 counties was represented by one or more delegates, and one from the Cherokee reservation. Counties represented were: Avery, Buncombe, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Madison, Mitchell, Swain, Transylvania, Watauga, and Yancey.