Extension educator leaving

By Doug Russell, News Editor

STIGLER, June 25 — She’s got a new goal: to be a stay-at-home mom and community volunteer.

In fact, “My new goal is to be the Volunteer of the Year in Searcy,” Chellee Burson said. “I’m too busy a person to just stay at home all the time.”

The OSU Extension Family and Consumer Sciences/4-H educator for Haskell County, Burson is leaving her job on June 30 to move to Searcy, Ark. Her husband, Mike, a safety officer for Union Drilling, transferred to Searcy in February. She’ll be joining him on July 6.

“I’m ready to go be with him,” Chellee said. “It’s been long enough.”

A come-and-go farewell for Chellee Burson will be from 2 to 4 p.m. Monday at the Extension office, located in the county courthouse annex, 202 E. Main St., Stigler.

When she gets to Searcy, Burson said, she plans to “do basically what I do here, just not for pay. We don’t plan on this being a permanent move. This is home.”

A three-year veteran of the Extension service, Burson said she didn’t start out to be in the position she now holds. Instead, she stumbled across the job while working as an intern at the Stigler News Sentinel during her senior year at Northeastern State University, where she was majoring in mass communication.

“I’d never heard of the Extension service at all until I was working (at the newspaper),” she recalled. She didn’t know much about agriculture, but was assigned to cover agriculture as much as possible, even writing a regular column called “A City Girl Gone Country.” As part of her duties for the paper, she dealt with the extension service and became interested in its mission.

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