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“Change,” or perhaps “innovation,” could be the defining word for the 12-year tenure of James “Jim” Graves as director of the University of Idaho College of Agriculture’s Cooperative Extension Service. When he joined the staff, it was called the UI Agriculture Extension Service. Graves served 33 years in extension, taking a year off in 1962 to earn his master’s degree in extension administration and supervision from the University of Wisconsin.

His association with the university dates to the World War II era. After graduating from high school in Pocatello, the South Dakota-born youth took a course at the UI Southern Branch (now Idaho State University) before heading to Moscow for a semester. While there, Graves enlisted in the military, but wasn’t called up until March of 1943.

Following his U. S. Army service, he returned to the Moscow campus where he earned his bachelor’s degree in animal husbandry (now “science”). He immediately was assigned as 4-H agent for Nez Perce County at Lewiston. He found, however, that the title created a bit of a problem. Farmers coming in for advice wanted to talk to the “county ag agent,” not the 4-H advisor. So his title was changed to “assistant county agent,” but that didn’t change the farmers’ attitudes. They still wanted to talk to the head man, he recalls.

Two years later, Graves went to Bonners Ferry as Boundary County’s extension agent. In his 10 years there, “I was everything. The home economics agent and I shared the 4-H work.” The arrangement was not ideal because the county courthouse basement was very small and the space was shared by the secretary and the two agents. Graves recalled that there were six different home ec agents during his time there.

His duties also included serving as the county’s co-director of flood control.“I was supposed to keep things from flooding. I organized sandbag crews and crews to help people move, and to reconstruct the dikes after the water went down. It was not a pleasant or happy time. If you were lucky, you got to sleep a half-hour here and there.”

The Kootenai River frequently flooded the community before Libby Dam was built, he said. “We moved everything out of our office to the second floor three times” because of the threat of high water. But the office stayed dry. His flood experiences included being a guide for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers’ helicopter crew as personnel looked for stranded rural residents and livestock. The National Guard also helped occasionally, and Graves assigned them duties as needed.

While at Bonners Ferry, Graves was encouraged to seek a master’s degree, so in 1961 he temporarily left Idaho for Wisconsin. While there, he wrote a paper on the practice of basing extension services at the state land-grant institutions. At that time, only two states, Idaho and Alabama, did not have state agriculture extension headquarters at the school, something that didn’t escape the attention of then UI President Donald Theophilus. He wanted to know why Idaho chose a different approach.

The Idaho philosophy, said Graves, was that the college needed someone to represent the extension service in Boise where state business was conducted.

When he returned from Wisconsin, Graves became supervisor of the newly formed District 4, based in Boise. Previously, extension services were divided into three state districts, creating travel problems for the supervisors. The fourth district covered Adams, Payette, Gem, Washington, Gooding, Blaine, Custer, Lemhi, and Butte counties. To visit all of those counties from his Boise office took about a week. “I would leave on Sunday and get back Saturday night,” he says. The district boundaries eventually were redrawn and are now much more accessible.

In 1966, Graves moved to Moscow where he became supervisor for the northern district that extended from the Salmon River to the Canada border. Three years later, he was asked to become state associate director, following the resignation of C. O. Youngstrom, who had held the post for a quarter century. The college dean at that time also was director of teaching, extension, and research.

Graves was reluctant to accept because he did not want to return to Boise. As it turned out, Dean James Kraus wanted him in Moscow, so on Nov. 1, 1969, the associate director’s office was re-located to the UI campus where it has remained. But that was only the beginning of the changes. After two years, Graves became director of extension.

“I hired two women as agriculture agents. If you think that didn’t cause a disturbance! ”

The name change came in 1970; it later was changed to the Cooperative Extension System.
“After I became associate director, several things came to a head and in 1970 or ’71,” Graves said, “extension faculty were given academic rank and tenure.”

About that time, the two district offices in Boise were divided, and one moved to Twin Falls. That move put the supervisors closer to the people who needed their services. Several of the counties were re-aligned into different districts.

All the crop and livestock specialists reported to the associate director at that time. Graves changed their assignments, making them responsible for subject matter to their respective departments at the college. “I wasn’t smart enough to know all about everything,” he explains. He also put a specialist at Idaho Falls and Moscow—they all had been in Boise—and moved the district office from Pocatello to Idaho Falls.

He wasn’t through making changes, though. “I hired two women as agriculture agents. If you think that didn’t cause a disturbance! The first was in Camas County at Fairfield and the second at Benewah County in St. Maries.”

The four extension districts were re-aligned, and now each district’s counties are contiguous, with 10 counties in the north, 10 in the southeast, and 11 each in south-central and southwest.

Graves served under three deans—Kraus, Auttis Mullins, and Raymond Miller—before retiring in 1981. Not quite ready to quit working, Graves spent two and a half years in Egypt as an agriculture extension advisor. He and his wife still live in Moscow, where he enjoys tending his roses.
 

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