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GREENSBORO — Guilford County’s cooperative extension program is losing its resident bug and snake identifier, environmental Jill-of-all-trades and one-person marketing department.

Brenda Morris will retire next week after 30 years on the job, the last nine as director of the multifaceted service on Burlington Road in east Greensboro.

The friendly, outgoing Morris said she will miss sharing with people the practical uses of research into environmental, agricultural and other technical areas by scientists primarily from N.C. State and N.C. A&T.

She loved the work, she said, because it was all about helping people solve everyday problems, whether it be passing along such traditional skills as sewing and nurturing crops or the latest innovations in solar technology and environmentally safe pest control.

“I think people believe we know just about everything, so we do get a lot of calls,” Morris said recently. “There’s nothing negative about what we do. There’s nothing controversial that we do.”

Morris started out in 1979 as a home economics extension agent just two years out of college. Midway through her career, the extension program evolved to focus more on environmental issues and practical, household insights for urban and suburban residents.

“It went from we’re going to teach you how to pick out the curtains to we’re going to teach you about solar energy and water conservation,” said Karen Neill, the extension program’s urban horticulture agent who has worked with Morris since 1987.

She admired Morris’ persistence, Neill said, in branching out into such areas as working with local real estate companies to promote green-building techniques or with pest control managers on less-toxic ways to rid the house of insects.

“There were times she was crawling around under houses to inspect for termites,” Neill said.

But after taking the reins of the program in 2000, Morris’ job became primarily administrative, focused heavily on marketing the many services it offers.

She has fulfilled those duties with aplomb, said William Wickliffe, the local program’s agriculture agent.

“She’s a people person, without a doubt. She never met anybody who didn’t become her friend,” Wickliffe said.

Morris also has a knack for effective leadership, he said: “She let people do what they are trained to do and only came in when she was asked or it was clear she could be of assistance.”

Morris enjoyed the various hats she wore, even her role as go-to person to ID bugs and snakes. That task led to more than a few strange telephone conversations — like the woman who was taking a shower when a snake slithered into the tub. “I said, 'I bet you got out of there fast,’” Morris recalled. “She said, 'Yes, ma’am, I did.’”

Morris isn’t moving on to another job. It’s just time to try something else and embark on another phase of life with her husband of 31 years, Keith. They have two grown sons, Daniel, 25, and Dustin, 21. Nobody has been named yet to succeed her. The opening will be advertised and an interim director probably appointed.

She’s not sure how the next chapters of her life will unfold. Possibilities include learning to make pottery, continuing to play the piano, taking painting classes, getting into real estate sales, and spending more time at her family’s Oak Island beach house.

“I’ve got a bucket list, although I’m not saying for sure that I’ll do everything that’s on it,” Morris said.

She might even return to the extension service occasionally, she said. But this time as a volunteer.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com