Meet Charlene Shupp Espenshade, National Grange Youth Director
Greetings from the Keystone State of Pennsylvania! As I write this, I am just in the early days of serving this organization as the National Youth Director. In the months ahead, I look forward to meeting Grange Youth from across the country at the Regional Youth Conferences.
As requested, I wanted to share a little bit about myself and my family. My husband Matt, son Evan, 2, and I live on his family’s dairy farm in Lancaster County, PA. Both Matt and I have a family heritage based in agriculture. I grew up on my family’s four-generation dairy farm in Tunkhannock, PA. My husband’s farm has been in his family since 1867. The farm is home to registered Holstein and Guernsey dairy cattle, some of which we show at several local and regional shows.
In addition to helping on the farm, I am the special sections editor for Lancaster Farming newspaper in Ephrata, PA.
In Grange, I am a member of Elizabethtown Area Grange #2076, Elizabethtown, PA. and associate member of Oriental Grange #165, Lake Winola, PA. Matt and I served as the Pennsylvania State Grange Young Couple for two terms, 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 and on the state youth committee. At Elizabethtown, I serve as the Youth Committee Chairperson and the Assistant Steward.
The experience I bring to this job is a varied one. I graduated from Virginia Tech with a bachelor’s degree in Dairy Science and a minor in Communication Studies. My agricultural activities include the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, Wyoming-Lackawanna Counties (PA) Farm Bureau, Wyoming-Lackawanna Counties (PA) Dairy Princess Committee; and the Elizabethtown Fair Dairy Show Chair. In 2007 I was a finalist in the American Farm Bureau Federation Young Farmer and Rancher Discussion Meet. In 2006, Matt and I were the state winners in the AFBF Excellence In Agriculture Contest.
I enjoy serving on the Dickenson College Kappa Alpha Theta Advisory Board. Other memberships include Order of the Eastern Star, National Dairy Shrine, American Guernsey Association, and National Holstein Association.
Looking forward, I am a firm believer in our Youth programs. As outlined by our National Master Ed Luttrell, the Youth are and will continue to be a vital part of our organization. The Grange offers a unique opportunity to our youth. We must work together to capitalize on our strengths in order to prepare the youth and young adults to become advocates for our communities and rural America.
Grange is truly a special organization. It is the one organization that is truly designed for the betterment of the entire family. As a child, I enjoyed hearing the tales from my Grandpa Shupp as a Grange member during the 1940s and 1950s. When I joined at 16, I was blessed to have several members make sure I was always welcome at a meeting. In college, these same Grangers established a scholarship fund to pay my dues while in college and sent the best care packages. When I moved away from home, Grange was something that helped me adapt to my new community. Now married, farming, and a mother, Grange continues to provide me with a voice on important issues at the county, state and national level.
I hope you all enjoy a great spring and visit the National Grange Youth Website to see the latest information on contests, news, and other Youth events.
Meet John Goodman, Legislative/Communications Intern
As a seven-year-old, I thought that my best friend’s invitation to attend our county’s Junior Grange Camp would simply give me something to do over the summer months. Hardly could I imagine that all these years later, I would end up working in our national headquarters.
I grew up in the Hookstown Grange in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. As a junior granger, I was elected to serve as Chaplain and Overseer, but my favorite part of the experience by far was participating in Grange Talent shows, both as a junior granger and as a member of our subordinate Grange. This is how I got to attend my first National Convention two years ago in Columbus, Ohio; for such an amazing experience, all I had to do was show up, play the piano and sing!
I attended South Side High School in Southwestern Pennsylvania, and when I wasn’t playing drums in the marching band, I spent most of my time dreaming of a career in ministry and/or politics. This remained my dream as a foreign exchange student in Hong Kong for my senior year of high school, and in fact, I still study in both of these fields – in the church, I’m a licensed local ministerial candidate, and as for my undying thirst for politics, I currently attend American University as a freshman in the School of Public Affairs with a major in Interdisciplinary Studies: Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics, and Government.
I don’t consider working for the National Grange to be anything less than a privilege. I know that it’s rare to garner such great, real world experience in your field of study during the first year of college, and I can honestly say that I genuinely look forward to waking up and heading to work every Tuesday and Friday morning.
That’s probably all you need to know about me, but if I had to throw in one more thing just for the fun of it, I’d tell you that I collect neckties. So far, I own 180 of them, and they all hang from the ceiling of my dorm room.
But on a more serious note, there aren’t too many causes I support more than that of promoting rural America. As a proud product of rural America, I view it as an honor to have the opportunity to further our interests here in the Capital of our Nation, and I’m really looking forward to doing so over the coming months.