News        from ABAC

Michael D. Chason Director of Public Relations ABAC 30 -- 2802 Moore Highway Tifton, GA 31793-2601 Phone 229-391-5055 Fax 229-391-5051 mchason@abac.edu

IMMEDIATE March 13, 2009

MOTORCYCLE, PLOW LINE BROUGHT GENE RAGAN TO ABAC

TIFTON—In September of 1941, Gene Ragan rolled to a stop on his 1932 Harley Davidson motorcycle in front of the administration building at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. All his possessions were tied to the back of the Harley with a plow line.

Now he realizes he had arrived at the Promised Land.

“ABAC was the ‘chosen place,’’ the 85-year-old Ragan said recently after receiving the prestigious Distinguished Alumnus award from the ABAC Alumni Association. “I came to ABAC for two reasons, to realize a country boy’s dream to become a county agricultural agent and to be able to get a job in hard times.”

Now living in Dothan, Ala., Ragan recalls the day he was hired at the nearby Coastal Plain Experiment Station as a “dairy boy.”

“I worked before and after classes at ABAC,” Ragan said. “I worked the same schedule Sundays and extra time on Saturdays for 40 hours a week at 25 cents an hour.”

Ragan said the dairy at the Experiment Station furnished him with a white t-shirt, overalls, and “wet” high top shoes.

“That might have been the best time of my life,” Ragan said. “Where else could a country boy with practically no money get a job and start a career in times like those?”

The Distinguished Alumnus Award is presented annually in recognition of alumni who have distinguished themselves through professional achievement, community service and service to ABAC. Past recipients have included the well-known and the hardly-known. It is the highest honor bestowed on an alumnus by the Alumni Association. It was first presented in 1969.

Ragan is a member of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting Hall of Fame. His stint of 40 plus years of farm television is believed to be the longest in the nation at a single station. His plaque hangs in the National Ag Hall of Fame in Bonner Springs, Kans. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia (UGA) College of Agriculture with a major in animal husbandry and is a lifetime member of the UGA Alumni Association

Ragan is a member of the Board of Directors of the Bank of Early in Blakely, Ga.; a member of the Dothan Rotary Club; a Paul Harris Fellow; and a lifetime member of the Dothan Area Chamber of Commerce.

Ragan is the recipient of more than 70 awards and honors. He and his wife, Marilyn, have two sons, Russell and Middleton. The Ragans celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary in 2008.

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