Tacy Stickers 4-H Club to Celebrate 100 Years At Tacy Fair

The Tacy Stickers 4-H Club will be celebrating their 100th anniversary at the Tacy Fair on Saturday, August 3. The Club is the oldest club in Barbour County and dates back to 1924.

The club began with a goal of teaching farm boys and girls better farming and homemaking methods. The idea was to provide practical and “hands-on” learning while connecting public school education to country life. The 4-H program has evolved and now strives to teach youth about leadership, develop public speaking skills and participate in community service projects.

If you’ve ever wondered how the Tacy Stickers Club got its name, here’s the story as written by long-time club member, Glenna Stalnaker who passed away in 1996. “Stickers, stickers, stickers. Being a 10-year-old and in the midst of a blackberry patch with mother, two sisters and two brothers and a great big, enormous empty pail to be filled with berries; my mind wondered to the stickers not the berries. They stuck to my hair, my arms, my ears, scratched my legs and seemed determined that we were not going to pick the beautiful berries. But believe it or not, we stuck too – with patience, endurance, and courage we filled our pail.”

Mrs. Stalnaker went on to write, “Wouldn’t it be super if our group of Tacy adolescents and teenagers who were trying to organize a 4-H Club could stick to our purposes like the vines of the blackberries? Together we stuck together and reached our goal. It was easy to reach some small berries, but the biggest and sweeter ones were hard to reach. The stickers stuck together on the vines to keep the berries, but my family also stuck together and won.” So, the name “Tacy Stickers” was proposed for the first 4-H club in the Tacy community and has continued for 100 years.

Hundreds of children have been members of the Tacy Stickers 4-H Club in Tacy. The club has been led through the years by Myrtle Stemple, Brenda Keller, Jan Coffman , Shelly Gainer, Dyanna Auvil, Lisa Sharp, and most recently Clark and Paula Townsend.

The 2024 Tacy Fair will be a celebration of the club’s history. All former members are invited to attend and be recognized along with former Tacy Fair queens and kings. The Fair will held at the Tacy Community Building on Saturday, August 3 beginning at 11 a.m.