A stroke in April 2018 temporarily relegated Rose Coffey Graham to “working from the bed.”
She still had plenty to do.
Living near Oktibbeha County Lake, approximately halfway between Maben and Starkville, she has volunteered with several initiatives and organizations in both communities for decades. Possibly her best-known contribution is leading Oktibbeha County’s Controllers 4-H clubs.
Not too long after her stroke, Graham recalls, she had started getting around on a walker, making it back to meetings for her clubs whose members range in age from 5 to 18. Graham had started to wonder how permanent the walker would be, when from the mouth of one of her youngest 4-H members came a challenge.
“This 5-year-old 4-H-er comes up to me and says, ‘Ms. Rose, I don’t like seeing you on that walker,'” Graham said. “And I thought, ‘If this young girl has that much faith that I can get off this walker, then I have to show I have that much faith too.'”
Each night for a few months afterward, Graham said, when everyone else in her home had gone to bed, she would set a chair out on the floor a short distance in front of her and try to walk to it unassisted. If she fell, she would crawl to the chair, pull herself up and try again. Each night she met her goal, she moved the chair farther away the next night.
By February 2019, Graham, now 54, was walking independently again. In ways both literally and figuratively, she’s been doing that most of her life.
When she was still a student at Maben High School, she was first introduced to 4-H when Oktibbeha County Extension Service Agent Grenell Rogers taught a cooking workshop to the church group of a friend Graham was visiting.
Graham didn’t use that inspiration to join a 4-H Club. She wanted to start a new one.
“I thought, ‘Why can’t we get this in our community?” Graham recalled.
She was too young to lead a club under her own name, so Rogers took Graham under her wing to help her start the first Controllers Club in 1984. By that time, Graham was a student at Mississippi State University.
The first club dissolved as members aged out. But in 2011, Graham started the Controllers Generation II Club, followed by Controllers Generation III in 2018. The two clubs today boast a combined membership of about 60, she said, and that number is growing.
“Even with the pandemic going, people are still wanting to join,” she said. “I have applications to turn in right now.”
The clubs’ general format includes monthly meetings, along with club projects and workshops in the community. Members meet firefighters, police officers and community leaders; take part in awareness programs for health issues like diabetes and breast cancer; and partner with various organizations for community projects.
Recently, they volunteered with the Starkville chapter of United Way’s “United We Read” and “United We Feed” programs — distributing donated books to children at the spring and summer Community Farmers Market and stocking a local food pantry with donated canned goods.
Last year, they partnered with the Mayor’s Health Council to start Maben’s first community garden.
The COVID-19 pandemic has definitely changed the way the Controllers clubs operate, but it hasn’t curtailed their desire to learn and make a difference, Graham said.
The clubs meet virtually at least once a month and members keep a calendar of activities they complete on their own as they can. They also utilize social media more than ever.
When they do get together for a project or workshop in public, they always wear masks and practice social distancing.
“We’re still going strong,” Graham said.
Franco Shields has two prevailing memories of his time in the first generation of Controllers 4-H: his mom and overcoming his fear of public speaking.
Shields, now associate minister at Pleasant Hill United Methodist Church in Starkville, is Graham’s eldest child. He also is a counselor for the Controllers Generations II and III clubs.
“One of my earliest memories of 4-H was Mom loading a bunch of us up and taking toys for Christmas to kids who didn’t have any,” Shields said. “… My mom gets motivated by helping people. If she couldn’t help people, she would probably go into a depression.”
For Graham, it’s about leaving a legacy worthy of whatever time she has on Earth.
“I know one day I am going to leave this world, and I just want somebody to be able to say of something positive they do, ‘I learned that from Ms. Rose.'”
In the meantime, and as long as Graham is still around, 4-H stands to continue featuring prominently in her work.
“Learning never stops, so why should I stop?” she said. “Before it’s over, we’re going to have Controllers Generation Four. If I live to be 100, there may be a Generation 10.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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