This is part of how that big, terrific, organization played a huge role in my small story.

The FFA started, for me, in the sixth grade. Some teachers came down from the high school and talked about what they did in the big blue building.

“We don’t build UFOs,” they said, and they explained the wood shop, the greenhouse, the FFA and more. Maybe they talked about the name change. The National FFA Organization had just moved on from the traditional Future Farmers of America name. Changing with the times. As an exurban kid I was as representative of that as anyone. But, on this day, they were on a recruiting trip. Rising seventh graders need electives and I didn’t have any other plans. That’s how it started.

The antics and the class made me sign up again for another class in the eighth grade. (After six years of shop and classroom pranks it is amazing we all made it out with 10 fingers.) I wasn’t very good as a wood worker. I never got much better. I never could draw a very good bead with the arc welder. I can still smell all of those shop smells, even now, but now I know I was gaining something more valuable, for me, than shop skills.

As a rising freshman I went to the state FFA convention in Montgomery. One of our upperclassmen was a state officer and I was in a state championship contest for agricultural mechanics. (Think small engines, plumbing, electricity, all of the things I know better than to mess with today.) After the convention Mr. Caddell said he could see me as a state officer one day. That was a big goal and I liked it.

To get there I’d have to take part in public speaking contests. I was bad, but after three years I started getting better.

My junior year I finally won the county, placed second in the district and made it to the state finals. The experiences along the way — going to conventions for state finals for ag mechanics, forestry and public speaking, chapter and district responsibilities, attending national conventions in Kansas City — all led to an opportunity to run for state office at the end of my junior year.

I was fortunate to get elected and so my senior year was filled with great experiences. I traveled all over the state and much of the southeast. I helped run leadership workshops and delivered speeches to schools and meetings all over Alabama. It allowed me to create a strong extracurricular resume and taught me a great deal. I met amazing people, my college roommate, lifelong friends and others too numerous to detail.

At the end of our year as state officers Jason, Heath, Carla, J.D., Jeremy and I – six kids from all over the state – had a conversation about the end of one chapter being necessary to open the next exciting chapter of life. We were very wise at 18. Today they are business owners and bankers and insurance executives and so on.

The FFA gave us a lot. And we look so young and fresh and cool in our corduroy.

Every couple of years I try it on and this week I was pleased to see that my state officer jacket from mumble-mumble years ago still fits. (Sorta.) (I mean, I can put it on and zip it all the way up.) (That’s what “fits” means, right?) (Who needs to breathe, anyway?)

I had many valuable experiences, and this could go on and on, but the most important thing the FFA gave to me was the leadership of two good men. Mr. Swaffield and Mr. Caddell were battle-tested teachers. They are two solid, stand up, good, decent, morally upright father figures I benefitted from as a teenager, when a boy needs them most.