Interview with Gladys Lickert, November 7, 1984

Interview Summary

-Gladys Maggard Lickert was born in Cindy, Kentucky in Leslie County in 1913, earned B.S. from Eastern State University in 1944 and got a masters degree from Peabody College in Nashville, TN. She did post-graduate work at Cornell and University of Illinois and attended two short courses for extension workers along with her husband Raymond Lickert in Arizona and Colorado.
She was at Buckhorn High School for ten years, left there and went to Berea College, where she taught in the high school as a critic teacher for the college students in home economics. She stayed there for two years before going to the University of Louisville, where she was the home management and family life teacher. In 1955 she came to the University of Kentucky where she worked as an extension specialists in home management.She has also worked as a home agent and was at UK for 15 years, working mainly in home management and housing. Then, when her husband retired from extension they moved to Campbell county where he was born and raised. She went to Pendleton County as the Agent for Home Economics. Mrs. Porter retired in Campbell County and she got a job as an agent there in 1971. She was there five years until she retired.
She mentions differences between extension work and teaching. Teaching in extension was similar to teaching in high school and was very enjoyable. She enjoyed working with the adults and becoming acquainted with them.

Programs and Projects:
She started out as the home management specialist at UK. She needed a housing person to work out in the state with families and held clinics throughout the state and tried to teach better planning for homes, doing remodeling and showed families how to do this to fill their family needs.
-farm and home development program, set up clinics all of the state, working with families to improve their homes and their farm lives,
-changes: families have become smaller. worked a great deal with family planning. worked with diets how to have better balanced meals, helped people to raise their standards of living a great deal. She developed a lot of leadership with homemakers out in the counties and sent letters to homemakers looking for people interested in being leaders.
-Home Economics Department of the College of Agriculture, College of Home Economics. Teachers were very low in enrollment and in faculty members and leadership available
-did a lot of teaching in classes, acted as chairperson of one of the departments, felt that it was too much of a one-sided thing, gave half of her time to the College of Home Economics when she should have been working full-time in extension.
-College of Home Economics has seen some vast improvements, had some very good deans and have completed some outstanding work in developing the department, lots more cooperation between the college and extension
-major problems that had an effect on farming and rural people
-families interested in improving their housing, get to know more about food and nutrition, budget planning, helping the people to spend their money wisely and use it to their best advantage
-found when she went to Campbell County as an extension agent that very few of the women were sewing, taught people to sewing and use sewing machines, worked with the leaders in 4-H and taught them how to teach the 4-H children
Retired July 1, 1976, takes pride in driving around and seeing homes that she helped make plans for remodeling and that she has had a lot of influence on them doing things the right way, pride in her work as a county extension agent, did a great deal in housing and the other fields of home economics, real pride is housing and developing leadership
-problems: families still need better diets and better use of their money, need more in family life
-worked with ag engineers in housing programs, did a lot of work with the ag economics men did the outlook, went to Washington and got the information and took it to people all over the state
-set up estate planning session for people from the state, brought in lawyers who gave information on will and those kinds of things
-can see a great deal of difference in rural living today, upgrades, better educational programs, county agents have worked with livestock and farming methods to improve that part of home life, helped families to get water in their homes, get home beautification, families have enlarged their homes and have running water inside their homes, extension service should be continued, people are always learning and the new scientific research is the best way to get information to the people
-husband and a wife team in extension
-feels that it was very good working together, often discussed their problems and would give each other suggestions, she understood his problems in extension more, feels that it was a good thing and helped each of them

Interview Keyword

Kentucky's Cooperative Extension Service University of Kentucky

Interview LC Subject

Lickert, Gladys M., 1913- Lickert, Gladys M., 1913- --Interviews University of Kentucky University of Kentucky--History University of Kentucky. Cooperative Extension Service

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