“First Among 14,000
Club Girls,” from The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., published Friday,
March 18, 1927. There’s a nice photo of Lela Paul on the front page. To see it,
visit https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83025812/1927-03-18/ed-1/seq-1/
What It Takes to Be a Community Leader…A Man in Gallilee Suggested the
Formula 1900 Years Ago and Lela Paul of Pungo Unconsciously Made Notable Use of
It
This then is Miss Lela Paul of Pungo, Beaufort County, unanimously
approved by state and federal departments of agriculture experts as the
outstanding community leader among club girls on the farms of North Carolina.
Out of 14,000 girls
engaged in agricultural club work in North Carolina, Lela Paul, 17 years old,
of Pike Road, Beaufort County, has been rated the outstanding leader in club
work in the State and will go to Washington, D.C., as one of two girls from
North Carolina who will be entertained for a week by the extension division of
the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Pike Road is in the
Pungo section of Beaufort County, 14 miles from Belhaven, 45 miles from
Washington. To a stranger it would appear only as a desolate back county
neighborhood where farmers fight incessantly against the jungle growth of black
lands. A stranger passing thru the Pungo country wouldn’t see much in it to
make life interesting or even endurable. But out of Pungo comes a little slip
of a girl whose reputation as a community leader has brought her into statewide
and national fame within the past few weeks.
A little more than
a year ago the Department of Agriculture conceived the idea of picking out the
two outstanding leaders in girls’ clubs in every state in the union and
bringing them to Washington for a week’s encampment. Every girls’ club in the
State was asked to nominate its outstanding member, without knowing what it was
all about. Lela Paul among scores of others in North Carolina was nominated.
Lela didn’t know
it, but from that moment and for a whole year she was under the close and
constant observation of specialists, district agents and field experts of the
Department of Agriculture and all of its ramifications.
Under Surveillance
The little girl in
Pungo didn’t know it, but a dozen or more spies were on her trail for 12
months, checking up on all of her activities, and her deportment, in the home,
in the church, at the school, in the neighborhood. When she went up to State
College last summer to attend the annual girls club short course, she was under
observation by experts of the college from the moment of her arrival until her
departure. She didn’t know what they were doing, but they pushed her forward
into all sorts of activities, called on her for an impromptu speech,
interviewed her time after time, and studied her like so many scientists
studying a poor little bug under a microscope.
And then when all
the experts got their heads together and with their own notes and the reports
from county and district agents all over the State, they had to hand it to Lela
Paul of Pungo that she is the greatest little old all-around community leader
among all the 14,000 fine, upstanding club girls on the farms of North
Carolina.
Leaders Wanted
It was leadership
that the agricultural departmentalists were looking for. It wasn’t enough that
Lela should be the best little housekeeper, the best home gardener, the best
little clothes maker, the best food preservationist, the best poultry raiser,
the best little biscuit maker, and the best high school student in the State.
She had to be a community leader as well, who had the respect and confidence of
everyone in her neighborhood, to whom people naturally turned for leadership,
and who had qualified as an actual community leader.
And they had to
give it to Lela Paul, a 17-year-old Pungo girl who rises at 5 o’clock each
morning, helps with the cooking, house work and outdoor chores, catches the
school bus at 7:30 and rides 10 miles over rough roads to a country school,
carries a full schedule of third-year high school work, helps again with home
duties before she prepares her lessons for the next day; and with it all takes
an active part in club, church and community life.
When Miss Violet
Alexander, the county agent, was 45 minutes late at a club meeting one day when
her Ford broke down on the road, Miss Alexander found the club meeting under
way and proceeding with a flue program under the leadership of Lela Paul, who
had called the meeting together, apologized for the absence of the county
agent, and was staging a great meeting.
When the county
agent expressed a regret that older women in the community were not interested
in club work, Lela rounded up the older women in the neighborhood, enrolled
them in the club, and they gladly followed her leadership.
Under the
leadership of Miss Paul, the Pungo Club, which was organized a little more than
four years ago, grew and grew and grew. And then she did something that had
been done in no other girls’ club in North Carolina She conceived the idea that
her club should have its own clubhouse instead of having to meet at the
schoolhouse or in members’ homes. An idea with Lela Paul means action. She got
the land and lumber donated for the clubhouse and is now raising the money to
build the house.
How Did She Do It?
Now who is this
little Miss Lela Paul of Pungo and what is there about her that distinguishes
her from thousands of other girls on the farms of North Carolina, I asked Miss
Pauline Smith, district supervisor of girls’ clubs. Miss Smith answered by
bringing Miss Paul to Elizabeth City the other day and presenting her at my
office.
And so I looked the
little girl over. Never in this world would you make a snap judgement that she
is a leader in anything. She is just a neat, frail, modest, retiring little
girl who doesn’t make a move or a gesture of any kind to impress you. And when
I asked her how it felt to be a nationally recognized community leader, she
smiled naturally, showing a wealth of dimples, and said just what any genuine,
wholesome, red-blooded American girl would be expected to say: “Why, I think
it’s fun.”
And as I studied
this fine little girl and asked Miss Smith and Miss Alexander questions about
her, I discovered the secret of her community leadership. When the disciples of
Jesus were wrangling over the question of who should be the greatest among
them, the Master called them together and said: “If any may desire to be first,
the same shall be last and a servant of all.” The wisdom of the Great Teacher
is justified in the life and character of 17-year-old Lela Paul of Pungo.
To become an
outstanding community leader among 14,000 club girls in North Carolina, she
didn’t set out to be a leader at all. She only took hold of the things that
could be done on a lonely farm in a backwoods neighborhood in North Carolina
and did them so beautifully, so enthusiastically and so well that the neighbors
took note.
When help was
needed anywhere in the neighborhood, Lela helped. When a girls’ club was
organized in Pungo, the secretaryship was forced upon Lela because everybody
knew that she would put her best into it. And she did.
If an ignorant and
unskilled housewife anywhere in the neighborhood wanted to know the latest and
most approved method of preserving a certain vegetable, Lela would come over
and show her. If a little girl in the neighborhood wasn’t satisfied with her
method of darning a stocking, she would take the stocking over to Lela with
full assurance that Lela would make time to show her how to darn a stocking to
make it feel and war as good as new. If there was a school entertainment or a
Sunday school entertainment, Lela could also be depended upon to take an
important part. If there was a picnic or a party anywhere in the neighborhood,
Lela would be the life of the party and, without putting herself forward in any
way, would always have new games and diversions to suggest.
They have better
home gardens, better poultry, wear better clothes and eat better food because
of Lela Paul.
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