SCUC Connect Winter 2022

took one look at the makeshift display and openly wondered about his career choice. “He almost had a stroke,” she said, only slightly exaggerating. “He looked at his gym and he saw hay on the floor, bees swarming around in the corner, and to top it off, the goat gave birth.” Today, students from Samuel Clemens High School and Byron P. Steele High School, shelter their show animals such as cows, goats, pigs, and poultry at the Toby Connor Ag Complex, adjacent to the old Wiederstein campus. Most of them represent Samuel Clemens FFA and Byron P. Steele FFA, organizations that prepare its members for leadership and careers in the science, business and technology of agriculture through classroom instruction and hands on experiences. With the steady influx of new residents to the SCUC area, and the increasing suburbanization of the region, the Ag Fair has actually become more important than ever. “I think it will always be necessary to have it,” Borgfeld said, adding the district’s partnership with GVEC has helped the event grow exponentially over the years. Borgfeld, who also served as President of the SCUC ISD Education Foundation for over ten years, credits the assistance of Wells and Harborth for the Ag Fair’s success, stating that all three envisioned it growing beyond its humble beginnings. “I did. We did,” she said. “That’s something I want to be remembered for.”

Lolly Borgfeld, pictured below in 1995, and now with her husband, Louis, is happy to know that the Ag Fair continues to fascinate 4th graders long after she retired.

Dot Harborth, two of Borgfeld’s room moms at the time. “They just kind of bullied me,” she said laughing. The inaugural event, which was just a one day affair, got off to an inauspicious start. “It was supposed to be held in the big, open playground area, and it rained,” said Borgfeld. Quick thinking led it to be moved to the gymnasium, which turned out to be a less than ideal location for it. “A beekeeper brought her bees, the Harborths brought their cows, a local minister from Marion brought his goat,” Borgfeld said. School custodian Albert Ramirez, who would someday rise through the ranks to become Custodian Foreman at SCUC but in 1994 in his first year on the job,

S C U C C o n n e c t C o m m u n i t y E d i t i o n

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SCUC Ag Fair had humble beginnings as a one day event. Pictured, Willie Rakowitz, a Clemens student, presented to a group during

the first Ag Fair held at Wiederstein Elementary.