National FFA Week is a celebration of the impact the organization has across the country. To help in the celebration, Andrew McCrea shares this bit of FFA history on “American Countryside":
In 1925, four agricultural education teachers gathered at Virginia Tech University to discuss the formation of a leadership organization for boys enrolled in vocational agriculture class. The meeting was the beginning of the Future Farmers of Virginia, which evolved to become the National FFA Organization.
One of those men was Henry Groseclose. He deserves a lot of credit for the power and foundation of FFA. Not only did he use his hospital stay to write the entire constitution bylaws and ceremonies for a national organization, but when he returned home, he even shot and stuffed an owl for them.
Shortly after the meeting in the fall of 1925, Groseclose was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore Maryland where he was confined for about six months. During that time, he wrote a tentative constitution and bylaws for the FFA.
“Henry Groseclose was a mason, and Masonic rituals influenced the opening ceremonies FFA officers still use,” says John Hillison, a retired ag professor from Virginia Tech.
Groseclose also started a rough draft of the FFA emblem, which included a background setting of a half plowed wheat field with an owl perched upon a spade of wheat in front of the field.
“The idea of the owl was the ‘wise old owl,’ they thought that would be appropriate for the leader who called the adviser,” says Hillison, who has helped preserve FFA history in the “FFA room” at Virginia Tech. “They wanted to have an owl, so the men went out into the woods and they trapped an owl.”
That owl was stuffed and became the first adviser’s emblem for the Future Farmers of Virginia.
One of the other founders of FFA was Walter Newman, who became president of Virginia Tech. He knew FFA chapters were famous for their banquets and wanted to do something to recognize that fact, Hillison says.
“So, he thought, well, it’d be nice if they had china to put the food on instead of paper plates,” he says. “So, he commissioned a company to build china. As it turned out, those FFA members really didn’t care what the food was on. So, in order to get a minimum order Walter Newman had to buy it all himself.”
Some of that china is on display at Virginia Tech.
