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Show Six 4-H'ers Win Scholarships For a Course in Electricity Top 13,000 Club Members In Nationwide Contest. AMERICA'S farm youth is meeting the challenge of an electrical age and in many cases is ahead of its elders in preparing for electrical living liv-ing in the postwar period, the work of 13,000 4-H Club boys and girls in Rural Electrification Electrifica-tion clearly reveals. The 1944 contest in 4-H Rural Elec- s ness when he was only 17 years old. He made an insect killer from an old motor, a generator and coil from an old tractor. He built an electric eye which rings a bell when anyone enters his radio workshop. He made an electroplating device which works successfully, constructed a two-way telephone system between the house and the barn which operates op-erates through a radio tube amplifier he also built. He constructed his own radio transmitter set and a stroboscopic light which makes moving mov-ing parts of machinery appear to be - 7 ' ' ' 5 ', , V "W trification, which ended early in February Feb-ruary with five farm boys and one girl being declared national champions cham-pions at the National 4-H Club Congress Con-gress in Chicago, gave convincing proof of these facts. The six national nation-al winners were awarded $200 scholarships schol-arships by the Westinghouse Electric Elec-tric and Manufacturing company, which sponsors the contest in conjunction con-junction with the National Committee Commit-tee on Boys' and Girls' Club Work. Thirty-seven state winners, chosen from among the 18,000 throughout the nation who took up the project in their 4-H Club work, attended the congress here as guests of Westing-house. Westing-house. The voluminous reports, all carefully care-fully checked by county and state 4-H Club leaders, which showed how these youths had made electricity work in the "Food for Freedom" program, were the real revelations of the tremendous amount of energy and ability of the farm teen-agers, of their desires to make the farm a better place to live and of their ambition to produce food more scientifically. sci-entifically. Take the case of Frances McMil-len, McMil-len, comely 17-year-old Enid, Okla., girl who was the only one of her sex to win one of the Westinghouse scholarships. She Knows What War Means. Frances knows farming from a woman's angle and she knows it from a man's angle, too. She also knows about the sacrifices of war. The only girl winner was Miss Frances McMillen, Enid, Okla. She Is now studying electricity at Oklahoma Okla-homa A. and M. college. When her father died and her brother entered the army she took over the management man-agement of the farm. standing still. The list of his electrical elec-trical accomplishments go on and on all of them a tribute to his ingenuity, in-genuity, his ambition and his imagination. imagi-nation. Other National Winners. Four other national winners, youths from Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota, also have done outstanding work. Jesse Nemechek Jr. of Humboldt, Neb., built an electric pig brooder, bought an electric arc welder and saved many a dollar by repairing machinery himself, electrified much of the machinery in the farm workshop. work-shop. Rodney Hall, 16, of Turner, S. D., lives on a farm that is not yet on a power line, but he has built a wind charger which provides the home with electric lights and made a time switch connected to an alarm clock that farns the lights on in a chicken house automatically. Harlan Dietzel, Bay Port, Mich., has done the wiring around the farm, made an electric motor portable port-able so it could do a variety of jobs, constructed electrical heaters to keep water fountains from freezing and repaired much electrical equipment. equip-ment. Raymond Schafer of Red Lake Falls, Minn., constructed an electrical welder, mounted it on a trailer and now does welding jobs for most of the neighborhood. And I the money he makes will be used to r . r i f v .4) f I ; V , I r t ! ' , 'I u i Walter MacEvoy, Lockport, N. Y., became intersted in things electrical when be joined a radio club at school. From scraps he built an insect in-sect killer, a telephone system between be-tween the house and barn, an elec-troplater, elec-troplater, and many other pieces of equipment. buy new electrical gadgets for the farm when the war is over. Each of the 37 state 4-H Rural Electrification winners did an outstanding out-standing job. They had to in order to win the honors, because the thousands thou-sands of other youths engaged in the project gave them brisk competition. The young man she had promised to marry was killed in action overseas. over-seas. She has always liked the farm and helped a lot with the work around the 75-acre "food factory" on which she lives. Then, a year ago, her father died. With her older brother in the armed forces, Frances, her mother and her 14-year-old sister were left to operate the place, and with the wartime manpower shortage, short-age, it was impossible for them to obtain adequate help. It was then that Frances conceived the idea that electricity could be the "hired man" on the farm. She learned to keep the electrical equipment equip-ment on the farm in good running order, studied adaptations of electricity elec-tricity to new jobs. She added new electrical equipment to the farm and made it do more jobs. Soon the farm was operating smoothly and efficiently. He's 'Wired for Electricity.' In another section of the United States Lockport, N. Y. lives Walter Wal-ter MacEvoy and he's another top champion in Rural Electrification this year. Walter is virtually "wired for electricity." elec-tricity." He first became interested interest-ed in it as a member of the radio club at school. His instructor, recognizing rec-ognizing the boy's ability, soon asked him to help out in his private radio shop, and here Walter obtained more good training. In fact the training was so good that Walter started his own radio repair shop and became be-came the owner of a profitable busi- |