03/14/1996

Ed Horton, Gene Ragan, Fred Robertson Enshrined in the AU Ag Alumni Hall of Honor

AUBURN, Ala.- The 34th, 35th, and 36th inductees into the Auburn University Agricultural Alumni Association come from different professional backgrounds, but all share a common bond of career-long service to agriculture. Ed Horton, Gene Ragan, and Fred Robertson, the 1996 inductees personify the creativity and spirit of excellence so vital to the growth and development of Alabama's agricultural industry.

Ed Horton didn't grow up on a farm. His father was an attorney and later a famous judge, so Ed grew up in Decatur. His early studies in Latin and the sciences prepared him for a career as a medical doctor. Fortunately for Alabama agriculture, during summers, Ed worked at his father's cattle farm in the corner of Limestone County.

His father, who was to gain fame as the judge in the Scottsboro Case, started the first registered Angus herd in Alabama, and possibly the South, in 1925. His work with cattle piqued an interest by Ed in animal husbandry. In 1940, he enrolled in animal sciences at the University of Tennessee.

His education was interrupted by service in the Army during World War II, where he served with valor, winning a prestigious bronze star for action during the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, things happened quickly for Ed. He was married to the former Ann Williams in 1946, finished his degree from University of Tennessee in 1947, and built a home on the farm and took over its management in 1948.

The farm has grown to a diversified operation that still includes the Angus cattle herd, plus 1,600 acres of cotton, and a few hundred acres of corn and soybeans used primarily to feed the cattle. During his farming career, Ed has won virtually every award available, including serving as President of the Alabama Cattlemans Association and American Angus Association.

From 1963-67 Ed took time off from the farm to serve a stint in the Alabama Senate. He gained fame for leading legislators opposed to then Governor George Wallace succeeding himself. However, one of the most significant contributions Ed has made to agriculture came while serving in the Senate, when he introduced legislation that allowed unincorporated rural areas to get water. Known as the Rural Water and Fire Protection Act, this legislation brought water to rural areas in much the same way as Federal legislation brought electricity to these areas via the Tennessee Valley Authority.

In addition to farm related activities, Ed has served for nearly 30 years on the Board of Directors of Union Planters Bank, nearly that long on the local soil conservation committee, and for 12 years as chairman of Consolidated Farm Services in Limestone County. He also finds time to serve on the Board of Directors of the local library and hospital.

Family is essential to Ed Horton. Despite the death of his wife Ann in 1985, and the loss of his oldest daughter, Jean, when she was 31 years old, Ed has turned these tragedies into even stronger family ties. His current wife, Mary Alice, brought into the marriage four children, each with strong families of their own. However, Jean left perhaps the greatest legacy, in that her husband, Greg Blythe, remains on the farm, as a full business partner in the operation of Horton Farms. Ed's daughter, Susan Horton Faulkner, is a teacher in Birmingham and his youngest daughter, Jenny Horton Robertson, also lives in Birmingham.
Gene Ragan grew up on a two-horse farm in Early County Georgia. A vital part of his rural upbringing was seven years as a member of 4-H. During that time he was Georgia Meat Animal Champion and a member of the Master 4-H Club.

The Georgia Cooperative Extension Service also played a vital role in his childhood and his career. Though his mother did not have the opportunity to finish high school, she was a well-known authority on human nutrition, thanks to her work with Georgia Home Extension Specialist Fannie Mae Griner.

Gene's family moved to Daugherty County, and he finished high school in Albany. He went on to the University of Georgia, and though his collegiate career was interrupted by a stint in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he returned to earn a degree in animal husbandry.

In 1946, Gene joined the Georgia Cooperative Extension Service as an Assistant County Agent. A year later, he was County Agent in Stewart County. In 1948, he moved to Seminole County in southwest Georgia, where he worked until 1953. Throughout his extension career, Gene had excelled in preparing and presenting radio shows, and he recognized the potential of radio, and a new invention called television, for disseminating critical information to farmers.

The story around WTVY in Dothan, where Gene has produced the Gene Ragan Farm Show since 1958, is that when the first television set was turned on in Alabama, the Gene Ragan show was on. Though not quite the first in all of television, Gene's TV farm show is the longest running such program in the U.S. Including his early days in radio, Gene has been in the broadcasting business nearly 50 years. His farm shows are seen and heard in three states. Amazingly, he has never been employed by a radio or television station, preferring to remain a private contractor, with the independence to serve the Tri-State agricultural industry without any corporate interference.

Among his more memorable shows was his annual Coon Dog Show, which often meant having 200 more coon dogs at the studio for the live Saturday night show. Many of his second and third generation viewers may not remember the annual Fiddling show and the crosscut sawing contest, or his coverage of Rattlesnake Rodeos long before they were popular events outside the Wiregrass area.

Gene is an ardent conservationist and an advocate of strong agricultural research and farming according to sound scientific and economic principles. He also practiced what he preaches, in that he raised and sold beef cattle for 19 years. As a cattleman, he was a staunch supporter of the BCIA bull testing program at Auburn.

In addition to his farm broadcasting career, Gene has made significant contributions to the business community of the Wiregrass Area. He has served as an agricultural consultant for South Trust Bank for many years. He was named Small Businessman of the Year in 1994, and has was won virtually every agricultural service award given in the Wiregrass.

Back in 1958, Gene made one of his most significant discoveries. He discovered the prettiest girl in the Wiregrass, Marilyn Middleton, and he married her. They have two sons, Russell and Middleton, both of whom live in Houston County.

Fred Robertson grew up in Reel Lake area of northwest Tennessee. A self professed roughneck, not even a degree ag economics from the University of Tennessee, a stint in the U.S. Navy during World War II, nor a masters degree in ag economics in 1948 did much to calm him down. Then he met Martha Blount, whom he later married, and she did change his life. While working for the Tennessee Valley Authority, Fred won a Ford Foundation Scholarship to study public policy. His major professor was John Kenneth Galbraith, arguably the most widely published economist in history. Dr. Fred, as he is affectionately called by friends and former extension co-workers, received the Ph.D from Harvard in 1956.

He served as professor of ag economics for three years, then was hired by E.T. York (another member of the AU Ag Alumni Hall of Honor) to come to Auburn to be Assistant to the Director of Extension. He became Assistant Director in 1960, Acting Director a year later, and Director in 1962.

During the five years he served as Director of the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service, that organization underwent some of most dramatic changes in its 82-year history. Dr. Fred set out as Director to end the practice of individual counties operating independently of the statewide organization. This radical change was met by fierce opposition, and often Fred had to resort more to his Reel Lake upbringing than his Harvard education to make his organization stick. But stick it did, and in the process, the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service became a model for Land Grant Institutions across the country.

Among his many accomplishments as Director and later Vice-President of Extension, Dr. Fred set up a program, which was funded by the State Legislature, to allow extension specialists to return to school for advanced degrees. As these people began returning to Auburn, they brought with them new ideas and ways of implementing extension programs that further revolutionized the Cooperative Extension Service.

During his Extension career, Dr. Fred took pride in maintaining his independent attitude. He loved Extension work and often worked long hours and traveled extensively in the State to explain and lobby for his ideas. His efforts have been rewarded by numerous awards, including Progressive Farmer Man-of-the-Year in Service to Agriculture and Man-of-the-Year in Agriculture by the Alabama Farm Bureau. Despite all these award, Dr. Fred considers teaching Sunday school in the Methodist Church for over 25 years to one of his greatest rewards.

Fred and Martha Robertson have one son, Dr. Fred R. Robertson III, an Auburn veterinary medicine graduate and owner/operator of Greenwood Veterinary Hospital in Greenwood, South Carolina.

Though they did so in different ways, Fred Robertson, Gene Ragan, and Ed Horton have had tremendous positive impact on Alabama agriculture. That is important! Perhaps more important is the legacies they will leave behind. Every time a person in rural Alabama has a drink of water, irrigates a crop, and extinguishes a dangerous fire, Ed Horton will have played a role. Each time generations of Wiregrass remember the importance of agriculture, Gene Ragan will have played a role, and each time someone calls the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service for non-agricultural information, Fred Robertson will have played a role in making this information available.

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Auburn University College of Agriculture
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 Comer Hall, Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849
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Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu
by Roy Roberson

03/14/96