UF/IFAS Okeechobee County Extension Service

458 Highway 98 North

Okeechobee, FL 34972-2578

Phone: (863) 763-6469

E- mail: acletzer@ifas.ufl.edu

July 9, 2004

Feature Article - for release the week of July 11, 2004

Adam Cletzer, Extension Student Assistant

Cooperative Extension Director to Receive DSA Award

Okeechobee County’s Cooperative Extension Director, Pat Miller, will be presented with the Distinguished Service Award (DSA) by the National Association of County Agricultural Agents (NACAA), Thursday July 15, at the Wyndham Palace Resort  in Orlando.

"It has been his life’s work," said Linda Syfrett, leader of the Udder Bunch 4-H Club. "I can’t remember a livestock show or fair in the past 15 years when he wasn’t there, maybe not in the forefront, but always working in the background; always helping and always with a word of encouragement for the kids."

The award can be presented only once in an agent’s career and only to those who have demonstrated outstanding service to the community and success in Extension programs.

Only three are presented each year in Florida by the NACAA. Many excellent agents may work a lifetime without ever receiving this award; although most, including Miller, will tell you it’s the work itself that is most rewarding.

"I just get a kick out of helping people," Miller said, "That, and getting to work with some of the best Extension Agents in Florida."

As rare as the DSA may be, they are in no short supply in Okeechobee.  In 2003, Pat Hogue, Okeechobee’s Livestock Agent, as well as Debbie Clements, Okeechobee’s 4-H Agent, were also presented with Distinguished Service Awards in their fields. "I’d be surprised to find another Extension office in the U.S. with three DSA’s under one roof," Miller said. "It makes us incredibly unique."

Miller has spent the last two decades of his 32-year career in Okeechobee County after he and his family moved from Indiana.

In technical terms, his job is to make practical application of scientific research done at the University of Florida. The county Extension programs he oversees run the gamut from water quality and master gardening, to beef and dairy cattle programs, money management and the more identifiable Okeechobee Youth Livestock Show, H20 Encounter and all of the 4-H clubs.

However, the impact on people is further reaching than what any one program does.

"Our job is to help people help themselves," Miller said. "We educate and inform. When we give people more information, we give them more choices and greater possibilities."

The purpose of the Extension service has always been to get information and education to people in agriculture, Miller said.  Since 1914, the county agent has emerged as a trusted and knowledgeable friend in the community ¾ someone to be looked up to.  Sharon Spann, 25, is now an up-and-coming lobbyist in Tallahassee for the largest agricultural lobbyist firm in the state. But long before that, she was a 7-year member of the Udder Bunch 4-H Club in Okeechobee County.

"I owe so much of my success and where I’m at in life to 4-H," Spann said. "Specifically, to those who helped me most, like Mr. Miller and Mrs. Clements."

For Miller, this is the real reward of 32 years of work. "I’ve always got a kick out of helping people," he said. "I like to watch the kids grow up and mature. I like to see them succeed."

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