Page 4 — Thursday, February 15, 2024 — The Hastings Banner
The Hastings Banner
Devoted to the interests of Barry County since 1856
Published by... Hastings Banner, Inc.
A Division of J-Ad Graphics Inc.
1351 N. M-43 Highway • Phone: (269) 945-9554 • Fax: (269) 945-
News and press releases: [email protected] • Advertising: [email protected]Frederic Jacobs
Publisher & CEOHank Schuuring
CFO- ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT •
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Chris Silverman
Mike GilmoreTy Greenfield
Jennie Yonker- NEWSROOM •
Jayson Bussa (Editor)
Molly Macleod (Copy Editor)
Brett Bremer (Sports Editor)
Greg Chandler
Hunter McLaren
Subscription Rates: $78 per year in Barry County
$85 per year in adjoining counties
$90 per year elsewherePOSTMASTER: Send address changes to:
P.O. Box 188
Hastings, MI 49058-
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at Hastings, MI 49058Have you met?
Do you remember?
Did you see?
Celebrating
‘creative’ education
On a sunny, early spring morning
some years ago at the Gilmore Car Muse-
um, I recall encountering Hastings teach-
er Ed Domke and 25 to 30 students from
his Career and Technical Education class,
all armed with rakes, spades and brooms
coaxing life from the grasses and emerg-
ing plant bulbs following a cold, long
winter.
Ever the old-school, playful skeptic, I
needled Domke that his cheerful group
was likely more excited about being free
from a classroom on a gorgeous day than
studying for some future job. After all,
not every one of his students that day
could be destined for turf management
degrees at Michigan State University or
superintendent positions at noted region-
al gardens and sculpture parks around the
country.
I’ll forever remember Domke’s
response and hold it today as my own
meaning for what education in America
should be.
Though I can’t remember Domke’s
exact words, they went something like,
“No, maybe they won’t work in land-
scaping or agriculture but, even if they
choose something completely different,
they may always have a love for nature in
their own yard or even in the plant they
grow that sits in the windowsill.”
That’s why I’m happy that, rounding
the corner from our big-time holiday
season, we’re now celebrating National
Career and Technical Education Month
and, beginning Saturday, National FFA
(Future Farmers of America) Week.
Both programs are finding some solidi-
ty in our public education curriculums.
In Barry County, their value in prepar-
ing youth – and adults – for a wide
range of high-demand, high-skilled
jobs with an awareness of their contri-
bution to community life is being con-
firmed every day.
First organized by four Virginia high
school agriculture teachers in 1925 as the
Future Farmers of Virginia, the National
FFA Organization has grown to a record
850,823 students belonging to 8,
chapters in all 50 states. All high schools
in the Banner circulation area have FFA
chapters.
Because its focus has expanded beyond
just students interested in future produc-
tion farming occupations to students who
also want to be teachers, doctors, scien-
tists, business owners and entrepreneurs,
the Future Farmers of America is now
known as the National FFA Organization.
Nowhere is the logic in that name tran-
sition more apparent than with the Hast-
ings FFA chapter and its neighbor in
Delton.
Additional Hastings High School stu-
dents are learning outside of the class-
room, too. Hastings engineering and
design students have been making their
way to Bliss Clearing Niagara every
week. There, they’ve been putting on a
class teaching BCN employees how to
read blueprints. It’s an experience that
allows them to apply what they’ve
learned to a real-world application, all
while teaching them the soft skills
they’ll need to be part of an effective
team.
This month, newborn lambs are
expected at the high school animal barn.
Previously, Hastings agriculture teacher
and FFA Advisor Andria Mayack had to
trailer horses, hogs, and sheep to the high
school parking lot in order for students to
interact and learn with the animals.
For a city-born and raised kid like me,
these are remarkable educational oppor-
tunities. My agricultural education came
the hard way: One college summer years
ago, the country kids with whom I was
helping load hay coming off the balerstrategically arranged for me to pick up a
bale with a snake stuck in the binding
twine and still writhing on the side I
couldn’t see.
Two summers ago, my wife convinced
me for the first time to feed an apple to a
horse. I still occasionally count my fin-
gers after feeling like three of them went
halfway down the horse’s throat.
But that’s why I love the country. I’ve
done it, I’ve lived in it, I know its beau-
ty. It’s the same reason that little boys
and girls who play baseball or soccer,
basketball or hockey become lifelong
fans of those sports as adults. They can
still feel it.
That’s why we need programs like
CTE and FFA and teachers like Domke
and Mayack. Also business people like
Tom Watson who was recently awarded
the ROTH Award for outstanding busi-
ness leadership by the Barry County
Chamber and Economic Development
Alliance. Watson has devoted a big part
of his TNR Machine, Inc. business to
mentoring students in skilled trade occu-
pations.
These programs and people are reviv-
ing the art of creativity in education, of
the beauty that comes from working with
the hands.
Joe Meppelink graduated from Hast-
ings High School more than 15 years
ago. His story of studying to be an archi-
tect and then founding a design engineer-
ing firm in Houston was told in the Hast-
ings Reminder and once hung as a lami-
nated display in the high school hallway.
While completing the high school’s col-
lege prep curriculum, Meppelink was
always intrigued by the interesting
sounds and excitement coming from the
hallway leading to what he knew as the
“shop classes.”
After wandering down that hallway
one day in curiosity, Meppelink found
the source of that joy and even signed up
to take a drafting class. Today, as a prin-
cipal owner of Metalab, an interface
design firm in Houston, Meppelink cred-
its that early exposure outside the “nor-
mal” study track for his professional
success and for his many leisure time
interests.
Meppelink’s experience defines how
the vision of our minds can be expressed
by the work of our hands. That work is
what helps us appreciate the visions and
work of others. Just like Domke pointed
out to me at the Gilmore Car Museum,
learning landscape art opens up the beau-
ty of fairways, garden walkways and
blooming flowers. Exposure to construc-
tion trade work helps us marvel at build-
ing classics like St. Rose of Lima Church
or the Barry County Courthouse.
CTE and FFA programs must not be
allowed to become fading education
buzzwords like Chicago Math, whole
language learning, STEM, professional
learning communities or project-based
learning. We have an opportunity to
renew creativity in education and we
need to use it to save our learning models.
In his seminal 2007 biography of
Alfred Einstein, author Walter Isaacson
maintains that, “A society’s competitive
advantage will come not from how well
its schools teach the multiplication and
periodic tables, but from how well they
stimulate imagination and creativity.”
Einstein, perhaps the most genius mind
of our times, even said that, “Imagination
is more important than knowledge.”
Congratulations to our CTE and FFA
programs in Barry County and through-
out our country. We celebrate with you
the revival of creativity in education that
comes with imagination.
Doug VanderLaan
Guest ColumnistChilling out at
Gun Lake
Gun Lake residents and businesses
are gearing up for Saturday’s Gun Lake
Winterfest. The all day event features
family-friendly activities, from a vendor
market, corn hole tournament, magic
show and petting zoo to the polar dip,
which is not for the faint of heart.
With some snow forecasted for the
local area in the coming days, it might
even look a bit more like winter, too.
Visit gunlakewinterfest.com for a full
list of events and times.Setting up
camp
Banner June 27, 1985Nearly 1,000 bicycle
enthusiasts made Hastings
one of the many stops on
the annual PALM IV bike
tour. Pictured is the scene
behind Hastings High
School on Monday night as
the 950 bicyclers set up
camp. Other stops on the
tour included Holland,
Allegan and Dexter.Eldon Dodd started bird watching when
he was just a kid, watching birds land at his
mom’s feeder in Pokagen.
“We would all sit there and watch them,
and she taught us the names of them and so
on,” he said. “I probably really started to be
a little more observant of them, I would say,
maybe when I was 20 years old or so.”
Bird watching is just one of many ways
Dodd has found a way to enjoy spending
time outside. He’s always been an out-
doorsman, enjoying hunting, fishing, trap-
ping, hiking, canoeing and other activities,
even golf.
He served in the Army after high school.
An outdoorsman even then, Dodd was
excited when his initial orders called for
him to be stationed in Alaska.
“Man, my ears perked right up. ‘Oh man,
this is going to be great!’ I had my fly rod
packed and the whole deal,” he said. “Then
when the real orders came down, it was for
Germany. My heart just went, ‘Oh, man –
Germany? It’s gray, and it’s bombed out,
and it’s rubble.’ No, it was not that way at
all. It was quite a beautiful country.”
He spent time stationed in Munich, and
later at another post further south. He
recalls being able to look out his barracks
windows and see the Alps behind rolling
foothills and green pastures. Although he
was relieved his fears of a desolate urban
environment were unfounded, he would
later regret not being able to make more
time for his outdoor hobbies abroad.
“I had other things to worry about then,
I’m sure – being a young guy in the army
and trying to follow orders, and do what
you’re supposed to do, and be where you’re
supposed to be,” he said. “But even in my
free time, I don’t remember looking at the
birds in Germany. Now if I could turn back
the clock, it would be a whole different
matter.”
After returning home, Dodd went back to
school to earn his teaching degree. He land-
ed his first job in Hastings, where he taught
seventh-grade science starting in 1972 up to
his retirement in 2001. He’s remained in
Barry County ever since.
Over the years, he’s found himself
becoming more and more involved in bird-
ing. He took ornithology classes in college
and started keeping lists of all the birds he
had seen in 1990. He’s found his love for
the hobby has only continued to grow over
the years, with the advent of the Internet
and cell phones making it even easier to
enjoy. Websites like eBird.org made it easi-
er than ever to connect with other birders
and cross rare specimens off the list.
“Oh, that was a game changer. Before that,
it was just word of mouth. If anybody saw a
rare bird somewhere, you’d get excited, get
out your telephone and call somebody to say,
‘Hey, I saw this,’” Dodd said. “But with theadvent of eBird and the cell phone, all that
information became so available.”
There is one thing that the information
age can’t change about bird watching: it’s
more fun to do it with your friends. Dodd
is an active member of the Barry County
Bird Club, through which he’s maintained
many connections with his fellow avian
enthusiasts.
“Birding is a lot more fun if you can do
it with somebody,” he said. “It’s fun to do
by yourself, too, and a lot of people do. But
having somebody with you, maybe to
bounce an idea off of – ‘Wait, look at that
one. What do you think that could be?’ –
you know, putting your heads together and
figuring it out. That’s a benefit to birding
with somebody.”
The community and collaboration
involved in birdwatching are just some of
the intangible qualities that make it great,
Dodd said. Although he has a hard time
articulating exactly why birdwatching has
been able to capture so much of his atten-
tion throughout his life, there are a few
simple things he can point to.
“I think it’s because birds are just so neat
to look at. It’s one thing to drive down the
road and see the bird fly across in front of
you. But when you get to where you can
look through a pair of binoculars and see
the detail, see the markings and get a
chance to look at its behavior, then you start
to get fascinated by birds,” he said.
“Otherwise, they’re just there. In my
experience, you don’t appreciate things
until you know what they are. You could do
the same thing with wildflowers, and trees,
and whatever. If you don’t know what they
are, how would you even know if they were
gone? To me, it’s kind of important.”
While some hunt for rare trees, wildflow-
ers, bugs or mushrooms, Dodd chooses to
spend his time looking at birds simply
because he likes to look at them. Bird-watching, like many of his other hobbies, is
closely tied to Dodd’s respect and admira-
tion of the natural world. If some strange
twist of fate had made it so Dodd wasn’t
interested in birdwatching, he would likely
have ended up appreciating something else
just as much.
“There are people that look for dragon-
flies like we look for birds. They keep life
lists of dragonflies and have the field
guides for them and the whole deal,”
Dodd said.
“That’s one step beyond birding. Appar-
ently birding got too easy for them,” he
laughed. “If I had another whole lifetime to
live, I’d probably do that.”
For his years of teaching Hastings youth
about the world around them and how to
appreciate it, Eldon Dodd is this week’s
Bright Light.
What do you like to read: For a while I
was into the spy novels, and the action
thrillers and those kinds of things. Westerns- I don’t know how many times I’ve read
all of the Louis L’amour series. Once you
get started on those, they’re a fun read.
Favorite season and why: Boy, that’s a
tough one because every season is some-
thing good. But, I think it’s the fall. It’s so
beautiful. I mean, what’s better than a crisp
fall day? The temperatures are 55 degrees,
it’s blue sky and the leaves are turning.
Birds are migrating south. It’s just a great
time. Walk through the woods and hear the
leaves crunch underneath your feet. It’s
very fine. Very fine.
Favorite vacation destination: The
Galapagos Islands. The birds, the killer
whales and the giant tortoises that live there
on those islands, that was quite an experi-
ence. That was kind of an extension of a
birding trip we took to Ecuador.
Advice I’d give to an aspiring birder:
Bird with somebody that knows more than
you do, and I would say you don’t really
need a lot of fancy stuff. You don’t have to
wear certain clothes to go birding, just wear
what you got. If you’ve got some optics that
you can borrow from somebody, you pretty
much need that. Then I would say pay
attention to the sound, because a lot of
times we identify them by sound. Even
when you can’t see the bird, you can hear it
well enough to know what it is. That takes
some work, but it seems to me that people
that are musical find that easier. They have
a better ear for it.
Each week, the Banner profiles a person
who makes the community shine. Do you
know someone who should be featured
because of volunteer work, fun-loving per-
sonality, for the stories he or she has to tell,
or for any other reason? Send information
to Newsroom, Hastings Banner, 1351 N.
M-43 Highway, Hastings, MI 49058; or
email [email protected].
Eldon Dodd