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Grady Bowden, the long-time agriculture teacher at Summerfield High School, was better known as “Pop” Bowden.

When Dewey Trogdon was in school, he said, you had to be a member of the baseball team or a high school senior before you called Bowden “Pop” to his face. Some of the other men didn’t remember that; maybe later he allowed everybody to call him “Pop.”

Bowden was an excellent baseball player and went to N.C. State to play baseball — on a football scholarship. He won a baseball scholarship, but they had all been used, so they let him attend on an unused football scholarship.

Most of his students still remember him taking the boys to Future Farmers of America camp at White Lake. He usually carried the boys to Carolina Beach one day during the week; it was the first time many of them had seen the ocean.

Bill Gordon said that when he and Bob, his brother, went to White Lake, they could get a boat ride to Goldston Beach on the other side of the lake. They went one day but missed the last boat back and had to walk all the way around the lake back to the camp.

Bill Cummings remembers the time he went to White Lake. W.C. Warren drove his dad’s old station wagon, and somebody else drove a pickup truck. All the boys were asked to bring a pound of country ham and maybe some eggs. There was a crew to do the cooking, and meals were served in the dining hall.

Each school group had a screened-in cabin to sleep in. Robert Flake Shaw remembers competitions between the school groups. They played horseshoes, water polo and ping pong.

Shaw also remembers a story he heard about Pop taking a group to an FFA camp in the mountains. They had to park and walk a long way up the side of the steep mountain. The boys had to carry their gear, but at least they didn’t have sleeping bags, just blankets.

According to the story, when Pop got out of the car, he pretended to turn his ankle. Several of the boys managed to carry him up the hill; when they got to the camp and put him down, he danced a jig! He loved to pull jokes on the boys.

The agriculture boys built the shop at the school, Shaw remembers. They cut trees near the lake and did the building, but he thinks the county helped with the roof. Clyde Robinson remembers the woodworking machines, and Noel Shelton remembers making lawn chairs but said Pop wouldn’t let the boys use the band saw.

Ken Rierson said he and another boy helped Pop sow a meadow across Pleasant Ridge Road from where the Bowden family lived. Pop drove a small Allis Chalmers tractor and was dragging some pine brush to cover the seed.

The boys would jump on the pine limbs to make the tractor jump around and spin. They’d jump back off before Pop realized what they were doing.

Pop took the boys on field trips; they planted and pruned trees, judged cows, castrated pigs and showed farmers how to terrace the land to keep the soil from eroding.

Kate Hoskins asked Pop one day to come and look at her cows. He got Shaw from study hall to go with him. Hoskins said she’d had the cows for more than a year and still didn’t have any calves. As soon as they got to the pasture, they saw the problem — she didn’t have a bull.

Ralph Walker remembers that after World War II, the government had a job-training program for veterans. Bowden and Alton Sharon taught farming and shop in the agriculture building at night. The single veterans were paid $60 a month, and married veterans were paid $90 per month. Walker took part in the program and said that it went on for several years.

Bowden’s interests were varied. Trogdon remembers that Pop bought Penn Trogdon’s land and planted about 10 acres of strawberries for people to pick. Truman Doggett remembers that Pop got some German prisoners to cut pulpwood.

Someone brought the men — and they were paid $1 a day to cut a unit of pulpwood — to the site every day. A unit was the same as a cord of wood except it was 4 feet high, 8 feet wide and 5 feet long.
Pop would arrange for boxcars to be brought to the depot for the wood, and Doggett hauled some of the wood to the boxcars.

Even though he liked to joke with the boys, Pop didn’t stand for any nonsense during classes. Ken Rierson said that Pop smoked a pipe all the time and wore his glasses on the end of his nose. He looked through the glasses to read and looked over them to talk to the boys.

Clyde Robinson remembers him carrying a yardstick, or two, and David Rierson remembers him carrying a wooden dowel while he was teaching. Walker remembers the yardstick well. He and Bill Wall were talking during class one day, and Pop cracked them over the head with two yardsticks.

Bet they didn’t talk in class anymore for a while.

All the men who were in Pop’s classes have fond memories of him, even those who got cracked on the head.

Thanks to David Rierson for suggesting this article and to all who shared their memories.

Gladys Scarlette is a local historian, a lifelong resident of Summerfield and the author of three books about Summerfield.