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JIM DOBSON
2009 HOLMAN AWARD WINNER
By Tom Bennett
The
center of good farming science and education in our watershed is
Blairsville’s Mountain Branch Experiment Station, recently renamed the
Georgia Mountain Research and Education Center, of the University of
Georgia College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. And a person
synonymous with its model soil conservation practices and breakthroughs
in feeding the world is former superintendent, himself a research
scientist and UGA associate professor, Jim Dobson. Jim retired in 1991
after 38 years at what he lovingly calls “the station.” For what he
accomplished there and contributions in retirement Dobson, now 84, is
the inaugural recipient of the Holman Water Quality Stewardship Award of
the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition.
The
profuse activities of the Dobson era included research and
demonstrations of forage and grain crops, fruits and vegetables,
ornamentals and beef cattle. In addition, the USDA hardiness zones 6 and
7 extend along the finger of the Appalachians dipping into the Georgia
mountains at Blairsville. So Dobson and his fellow faculty and graduate
students put to the test the winter hardiness of many crops. “Whenever
we were testing grasses and legumes, for example, we knew that if it
would survive the cold here, it could grow anywhere in the Southeast,”
Dobson recalled.
You
can find on the Internet today a typical research project from the
Dobson years. It is “Quantification of Disease Resistance that Reduces
the Rate of Tobacco Etch Virus Epidemics in Bell Pepper.” It was
completed in 1989 by three UGA faculty members and a graduate student.
They write in their fourth paragraph: “We gratefully acknowledge the
assistance of James Dobson, superintendent of the Georgia Mountain
Branch Experiment Station.” The station set an example when it was
designated early on as a soil and water conservation farm. “We carried
out all the best management practices on the station,” he recalled
proudly. He was the longtime chair of the Blue Ridge Mountain Soil and
Water Conservation District and a founding and continuing board member
of the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition.
DOBSON
NEVER married, instead living a life of service to agriculture and
public service, church and community. “I couldn’t find anyone who
would have me,” he said, but we doubt that. The late Dr. Fred Davison
(former UGA president) at Jim’s retirement compared him to Dick
Russell. Senator Russell was a bachelor like Jim, and he devoted his
life to public service.
The
Dobson rule for interaction among people is “Brevity, brevity, brevity!”
So it rules out listing here his numerous church, civic, educational,
historical and veterans affiliations that he has taken on as a
volunteer. It’s fair to say no one is more dogged or insistent in
selling tickets to non-profit fundraisers. Holding a batch of tickets
and with a gleam of determination in his eye, he makes Union County
charity drives successful. “When you retire again, then I will
start having more money,” a frequent target told Dobson.
DOBSON
WAS one of eight children of a cotton farmer in Central, S.C. In
January 1945 in Luxembourg during the Battle of the Bulge, PFC Dobson of
the 320th Infantry of the 35th Division of the 3rd
U.S. Army was wounded when a shell fragment struck his leg. “One of
those German eight-eights got me,” he recalled. He recovered in
hospitals in England and Atlanta and went on to receive a Bachelor of
Science degree from Clemson University and a Master of Science from the
University of Georgia. “In 1953, I came to the station in Blairsville
thinking I would stay a couple of years and then shoot for a doctorate,”
he recalled. “But I liked it so much here that I just stayed.” |
