Who inspired me to sift dirt through my fingers? To stand outside in inclement conditions fretting about shrubbery, to run back and forth with buckets of limp uprooted vegetables when the wind and rain threatened to steal them, to never throw away old bed-sheets because we might need them when it freezes? Who put the mechanism in my brain that occasionally tells me I ought to get into my vehicle and go purchase cow excrement from a man in a Lynyrd Skynyrd tee shirt who lives down a long dirt road?
He was my grandfather, Leroy Smith, and even though many people had a hand in encouraging me to enter this industry, it is his memory that I carry with me every day in my studies and every time I plant a seed, pick up a trowel, or open another plant pathology book. My inspiration was a man who attended kumquat, strawberry, and blueberry festivals, who rode Harley Davidsons, and who sang in the Society for the Preservation of Early Country and Western Music. A patient man, who was indescribably good and kind. My mom loves to tell a story about how he slipped with a hammer and whacked his thumb… but never cursed or yelled about, just sort of… twitched. A man who planted a pomelo tree in his front yard that fed us for fifteen years after he died, not to mention his countless flowers and trees that cheered us. Now that I am grown up and have my own pomelo tree, in fact my own collection of citrus trees, I have been especially moved to continue my education since half of my trees became infected with citrus greening. This included our own pomelo, that I poured so much love into in memory of my grandpa, whose original tree has since been heartlessly torn out of the ground.
For me this drove home the impact of plant diseases as more than just an abstraction that isn’t applicable to me and the people around me. It is now more than an inconvenience that someone has to deal with so that we can see a table of flawless oranges stacked nicely at the supermarket. In the future as I continue studying and contributing to research I hope I can help the scientific community in preventing other forms of currently incurable plant disease from devastating a business, or even simply from devastating home growers like me, who put their hearts and souls into their soil.
As far as paying it forward goes, my grandpa was also my role model in that aspect as well. He was very active in many communities, volunteer projects, botanical gardens, charities, and was a lifelong learner. I work towards the goal of being like him in this aspect, too. As a member of many horticultural and agriculture organizations, I am always looking for ways that I can help exchange and synergize knowledge so that many more can benefit.
For me, coming back to the world’s growing things is inevitable. There is room in everyone’s heart to be involved with this industry and I believe everyone can find themselves working with agriculture and be at home because it ties us to each other, to the earth, to the past, and the future. I know that my enthusiasm for horticulture, agriculture, and biology are infectious and I owe it to my grandpa. He inspired me and taught me, and I know that by continuing to follow the example he set for me with his life, I will be able to inspire and educate others, too.
limehouse 