Career in community

Brenda Bishop, who's retiring this week after 32 years with the Quay County Cooperative Extension Service, said an assignment by a professor long ago when she was studying for a master's degree probably led her to her long and influential career here.

Her New Mexico State University professor assigned her to perform a community needs assessment for the Tucumcari region.

"I'm a little bit shy by nature, and it was a little hard for me to step out," Bishop recalled last week in her office at the Terry Turner Building in downtown Tucumcari. "But it required me to go out and see what the needs were. It opened doors for a lot of things with programming."

In addition to leading thousands of children through the county's 4-H program, Bishop also obtained funding for various adult health programs ranging from diabetes management to fall prevention for seniors.

Bishop, who officially retires Thursday as the extension service's program director and family consumer science agent, will be the guest of honor at a reception from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. Friday at the Quay County Exhibit Center at 1100 S. Camino del Coronado in Tucumcari.

Sue Dowell, a Quay County commissioner, praised Bishop in a nomination letter for a Distinguished Extension Award.

"She has earned the trust, respect, and admiration of her community here. Quay County has been extremely fortunate to have benefitted from her dedication, talent, knowledge, and service," Dowell wrote. "For the past six years, I have served as a Quay County commissioner. That has given me the opportunity to hear and review the quarterly reports that the Quay County Extension Service provides to us during our commission meetings. It is absolutely amazing to view those who work so successfully in that program and the impact they make on our community, county and area."

Bishop acknowledged "I cried my eyes out" when she initially announced her upcoming retirement during the annual 4-H awards night late last year, said she still hadn't cleaned her desk and file cabinets with less than 10 days before her departure, namely because there still was stuff to do for the extension service.

Bishop said she had no idea how many 4-H children she'd guided through the years but said she started with 250 to 300 children annually when she began her duties during the mid-1980s. That number now is about 150 a year, due to Quay County's population decline.

"Some of my first 4-Hers, their kids just graduated from high school," she said. "Some I'd known since junior high, left the area and came back home to raise their families in the 4-H programs. That's a pretty cool thing.

"A lot of those initial people who were here when I was hired are still helping the extension service one way or another," she added. "The extension service becomes your family ... all those people you work with year after year after year."

Bishop said she decided to plan her retirement about five years ago, when she knew she'd have enough accumulated in her state pension. She said she didn't want to leave because of the workload ("I love this job; that's what made it hard to retire") but because she wanted to travel more with her husband, Tim, while she was able.

"I wanted to be young enough to do something else, enjoy some traveling," she said. "I've gotten to travel a lot of the United States for my job, but you're there for meetings. I want to go as a tourist."

When asked about her proudest accomplishments, Bishop mentioned diabetes cooking classes she helped start during the early 1990s.

"We discovered there was a huge need for people with diabetes to understand and interpret things or incorporate diets into their lives," she said. "It's not so much eliminating foods but choosing when you eat foods, and mixing and matching."

It again was a case where she saw a need in Quay County that wasn't being filled after talking to health professionals about the disease.

"A lot of times I'm ahead of the curve because people ask me questions, I don't know the answer, and away I go," she said.

When she first was hired by the extension service, her office was in the basement the Quay County Courthouse. It had just one computer that hadn't even been unpacked from its box ("Nobody had been trained on it"). Once the computer was in use, the entire staff shared it.

"The workload was a lot less when I started," she said. "As you're in the community longer, you find more and more needs; you find things you can work with."

As a self-acknowledged "city girl" who hailed from Albuquerque, Bishop said she picked up a lot a lot of knowledge from her extension service colleagues during those early years.

"I cam in knowing a lot about 4-H home economics and not knowing anything about rural life, really, or knowing anything about adult extension programs. My first years, I did a lot of learning.

"Computers, of course, haven't made our lives any slower," she said, laughing. "It allows us to do more and work more efficiently ... sometimes."

Though extension-service duties often ate up many hours, she said she still spent plenty of time with her two now-grown children, Wyatt and Bethany.

"The other thing about this job is you can bring your family to a lot of things," she said. "My kids were raised in the 4-H program.

"Wyatt wrote in scholarship application: 'My mom's an agent, so all I do is community service,'" she recalled, laughing. "The people (who looked at the application) laughed so hard, they called me."

Bishop said the extension service typically takes about six months to find a replacement. She said she wouldn't disappear upon her retirement and would remain involved with the Strong Seniors Stay Young exercise program and as a member of the Extension Association of Quay County.

"I'm going to stay with it and help with a few things," she said. "But I'm going to be picky with what I help with. When you retire, sometimes you get busier than when you were working."