Call this a hallmark moment for Betty A. Green, the woman who dedicated so much of her life for young people in this community and beyond.
But Friday, she would have us know, wasn’t about Betty Green.
It was about those young 4-H youngsters she mentored along her way–those 4-H’ers who have become educators, one a microbiologist, one a civil engineer, healthcare providers, lawyers and military leaders, all because Betty A. Green was there.
“My biggest passions were seeing the children be able to perform and to do outstanding things with their 4-H projects,” Green, 78, said Friday before being enshrined as the 60th member of the Cumberland County Agricultural Hall of Fame at the annual celebration of Farm City Week by the Kiwanis Club of Fayetteville at Honeycutt Recreation Center. “That was the reward for me.”
Paige Smart, 33, was honored as the 2025 Young Farmer of the Year prior to Green’s induction.
“Farming is not a job that you clock in and out of each day,” C. Wayne Collier Jr., president of the Cumberland County Farm Bureau, said about Smart. “It’s a lifestyle that Paige is embracing wholeheartedly with the support and love of her entire family through long days of dedication, frustration and gratification. Paige’s influence on the farm has been instrumental in the evolution of the business. She is helping to secure the future of agriculture in her family and community.”
A fifth-generation farmer from the Gray’s Creek community, Smart follows in the footsteps of her brother Ryan Kennedy, who was the 2013 Young Farmer of the Year, and her grandfather, Alton Earl Smith, who was the 1963 Young Farmer of the Year and in 2021 was inducted into the Cumberland County Agricultural Hall of Fame.
“It’s a very sweet honor,” said Smart, who works on the S&K Farm Market on Chicken Foot Road in Hope Mills.
‘The profound impact one person can make’
Cumberland County Cooperative Extension Director Lisa Benzaquen Childers said the county is proud to welcome Green to the hall of fame.
“Mrs. Green provided exemplary service to Cumberland County’s agricultural community, particularly through her dedication to our youth,” Childers said. “Her influence lives on in the remarkable achievements of the young people she mentored – among them a celebrity chef, a Broadway performer and Grammy Award winner, a retired lieutenant colonel, an engineer, a lawyer, a nurse, a pharmacist, artists and educators, a microbiology lead, a HUD (House and Urban Development) program manager, and leaders in finance and technology.
“Each credits their 4-H experience and Mrs. Green’s encouragement as being foundational to their success.
“She exemplifies the profound impact one person can make,” Childers said, “when they invest in our most precious resource – our children.”
Many of Green’s former 4-H’ers were in the audience, including Erica Ginyard, Jabari Baptist, Clenette Green, Adrian Gaskins, Beverly Gaskins and Terry Gaskins.
Green grew up in the Back Swamp township of Robeson County between Rowland and Pembroke, where she was raised by her grandparents, the late Thomas McArthur and Katie Copeland McArthur. Green says her father died when she was four months old.
When you grow up on a farm, you come to know all about early mornings until the sunset of farm life.
“I picked up sweet potatoes,” Green said. “I handed tobacco.”
Picking cotton, she says, is another story.
“My granddaddy told me I didn’t work fast,” Green said.
But Green was studious, earning an undergraduate degree from N.C. Central University and a master’s from N.C. State University, which led her to work with the Craven County 4-H Cooperative before spending 18 years developing the Cumberland County Cooperative Extension 4-H program, before leaving in 1998 to carry on her work in Hoke County.
She demanded the best of herself, and she demanded the best of her 4-H students.
“I always was told if you do a job,” she said, “give your best.”
Green developed 4-H initiatives for agricultural public speaking contests for young people on the county, district and state levels; taught her 4-H students about clothing and textiles; and introduced the 4-H embryology program at Cumberland County Schools, where students witnessed firsthand the life cycle of baby quails.
She developed 4-H programs for young people on Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base. She developed 4-H guidelines to train 4-H volunteers. Green was honored in 1988 with the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Extension 4-H Agents – the highest national honor for 4-H professionals.
“It’s not what she did, but how she did it,” said Kirk deViere, chair of the Cumberland Board of County Commissioners. “She saw something in young people that needed to be invested in. Thank you for believing in the young people of Cumberland County.”
County Commissioner Glenn Adams called Green a “beacon of light” in the community.
Epilogue
Betty Green was a humble inductee.
“I want to thank God first,” she said. “A lot of people have worked with me, and I am here because of them. Words cannot express how honored I am. Serving as a county 4-H leader is one of the greatest honors of my life. Thank you for this incredible honor.”
And a final word she wanted all to know.
“I want my 4-H legacy to be,” Betty A. Green said, “I was an advocate for children.”
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
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