Mildred Fizer didn’t exactly shatter the glass ceiling 58 years ago.
Rather, she simply etched her way through it, with grace and quiet confidence.
“Somebody, some woman, had to do it,” said the Morgantown woman who turned 103 Wednesday.
In 1966, she became the first female in the nation to steer a state 4-H club.
Before that, the organization that builds confidence and community among young people was strictly the province of the male persuasion — in terms of administration in the office and boots-on-the-ground in the camps, workshops and other learning sessions throughout the year.
Fizer, who grew up Culloden, a small town between Charleston and Huntington, joined the organization just a little later in life (in 4-H years, that is) when she began volunteering with the organization while in her 20s.
She became an extension agent in Cabell County in 1946 when she was 25.
“Later in life” didn’t apply to her century-plus birthday celebration at Sundale in Morgantown, where she’s resided in recent years.
She warmly greeted the people who came to sing “Happy Birthday” and wish her well.
Becca Fint-Clark, a WVU 4-H extension agent who coordinates youth education programs across Monongalia County, calls Fizer an icon who was an example for little girls growing up in a society that had sharply defined gender roles then.
Not that she operated under a single issue, the extension agent said.
“Some of it is about Girl Power,” Fint-Clark said, “but it’s really about kid power for her, when it all comes down. She’s a hero and mentor in 4-H.”
Fizer began her professional life in education.
She was a teacher who always told the kids in her classroom they could achieve in life, provided they stayed enthused and put in the work.
As those volunteer roles in 4-H kept layering, so too did Fizer’s enthusiasm for each new task and objective.
Her classroom became 55 4-H extension offices across all 55 counties in West Virginia.
And her (metaphorical) graduate seminars were conducted in the summer camps in every one of those counties she regularly visited in her role as state 4-H director.
Fizer’s mission was to bring kids into the circle, and that she did.
During her tenure, 4-H membership across the Mountain State increased from 35,000 to 55,000.
Her advocacy and outreach extended to higher education and WVU, where she established the Mildred Fizer 4-H Scholarship, which is awarded annually to West Virginia 4-H’ers on campus for their freshman year in Morgantown.
After she retired in 1978, the accolades kept coming.
The 4-H organization inducted her into its national Hall of Fame, and she was also recognized with a Distinguished Service Citation from the National Association of Extension Agents.
Other national honors came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and three years ago, on the occasion of her 100th birthday, Gov. Jim Justice decreed her a “Living Wonder Woman” for the state of West Virginia in 2020.
All that, and more.
Those framed certificates were enough to cover a whole wall, but her heart, as she told Fint-Clark, has its own gallery.
Her mind does, too.
She can access that gallery any time she wants, just by thinking back to the generations of West Virginia youngsters who thrived in 4-H under her watch.
Her colleagues in the cause — the extension agents and the county directors and the volunteers as she once was — were just as beneficial to her as she may have been to them, she told a WVU video crew during an interview 11 years ago.
“Just being with them and being involved in their programs, I’ve learned so much.”
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