THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 15, 1995 TAG: 9503150151
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 179 lines
BECKY CULLIPHER RECALLS a Christmas several years ago when she gave her husband a battery-powered miner's light to wear when he was working on the family farm after dark.
``That way, he'd never have to stop working!'' explains Cullipher's daughter, Pam Walsh.
The gift was a family joke, but the point wasn't lost on Louis Cullipher. The city's agriculture director readily admits that he has on occasion picked vegetables after dark in the beams of a tractor headlight.
His wife, two daughters and son aren't the only ones who recognize Cullipher's penchant for laboring long into darkness.
Thursday night it will be officially noted by his peers when Cullipher receives the 1994 Virginia Beach Man of the Year in Agriculture award.
``He's the hardest working man I know,'' says Blackwater farmer Don Horsley, a past winner. ``He made the comment to me once that he wished he never had to sleep!''
Sleep - as the average person defines it - is a rarer commodity for Cullipher, but by choice. ``I don't sleep very much,'' he says. ``We go to bed at 11:30 after the late news and I'm up by 5.''
``He's been known to get up at 4,'' counters Cullipher's daughter Pam.
Cullipher needs those extra waking hours to work with his son Mike on the family farm, to serve as president of the Creeds Ruritan Club, to teach Sunday school every third Sunday at Charity United Methodist Church, to belong to groups such as the Back Bay Restoration Foundation and to enjoy his family, particularly his only grandchild Hunter, who is Pam's 3-year-old son.
That's all in addition to his full-time job at the agriculture department, where he oversees a staff of 17. He coordinates the Virginia Beach Extension Service, supervises the Farmers Market and serves as the resource man and information gatherer for the City Council on issues such as the Agricultural Reserve Program.
Cullipher also is the resource for individual farmers like Winky Henley, who recently enlarged his Pungo farm's irrigation pond. Henley, whose wife Barbara is a member of City Council, needed advice about meeting environmental regulations when he rebuilt the structure. Cullipher was right there to help.
``He'll do anything in the world for you,'' Henley said. ``You ask him a question, he'll find the answer no matter how busy he is.''
Busy seems to be a way of life for Cullipher.
``He works himself to death,'' said John Baum, a former Man of the Year in Agriculture and the Blackwater Borough council representative. ``If I had any criticism of him, it would be to delegate more and not work so hard himself.''
Baum is a member of the selection committee for the agriculture award, which has been presented annually since 1966.
Choosing Cullipher for man of the year honors came easily, Baum says. When the committee met to make a selection, someone suggested that each person write down a nominee on a piece of paper, Baum recalls. Cullipher left the room to get the paper and when he returned, ``We just congratulated him,'' Baum says. ``We just all think he's so outstanding.''
There's general agreement throughout the farming community. Cindy Barnes, wife of Steve Barnes, last year's Man of the Year in Agriculture, sums up Cullipher's attributes.
``He the most balanced person I've ever known,'' Barnes says. ``He's a totally devoted family man, a church-goer and a community volunteer, and he's there for the neighbors.''
Cullipher's hard working-nice guy personality appears to be in the family genes. City Council's Pungo Borough representative Barbara Henley has firsthand knowledge of Cullipher's mother, Belle, now deceased, who was teaching fourth grade at Creeds Elementary School when Henley entered first grade.
``I was one of those children who cried a lot and when my teacher would get aggravated with me, she'd send me up to Mrs. Cullipher,'' Henley said. ``I spent most of first grade sitting in Mrs. Cullipher's lap!''
Although she never knew Cullipher's father, Edwin, she thinks he must have contributed to Cullipher's ``outstanding upbringing'' too, because ``Louis is just the epitome of a Southern gentleman,'' she says. ``He works so well with people.''
Born in 1935 on Knotts Island where his mother's family had lived since ``day one,'' Cullipher went to Knotts Island Elementary School and was in the next-to-last class to graduate from Creeds High School, which closed in 1954. Cullipher says his schoolteacher mom inspired him to get a good education, and his father, who farmed on Knotts Island and set a good example for him, instilled in him a strong work ethic.
``He didn't have to call me to help,'' Cullipher says. ``I wanted to go. It's just a matter of wanting to be a part of the operation. Most farm families are like that. Farming is a way of life.''
Cullipher went on to North Carolina State University where he received a degree in soils in 1958. Then he worked for the Soil Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in several Virginia locations before moving back to the area in 1977. His father had passed away and his mother was living alone on Knotts Island.
``I took a demotion to come back home,'' Cullipher said.
Cullipher's demotion was Virginia Beach's good fortune. He settled his family on a 25-acre farm on Princess Anne Road below Pungo and went to work as the district conservationist for Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. He spent the next 10 years ``walking the fields and marshes, boring holes, taking soil samples and relating them to the plants that were growing there.''
As a result, Cullipher knows every nook and cranny of old Princess Anne County like no one else. It was all good experience for a future agriculture department director in a fast growing city like Virginia Beach.
``Land use is what we're talking about here in Virginia Beach,'' Cullipher says, ``not just farm land, but septic tanks, trees and other things.''
When he drives down Princess Anne Road, he doesn't just see wheat fields or houses or woods. He sees what's underneath it all. He can see the soil layers and the water table.
``I picture the landscape as I drive down the road,'' he says. ``I can picture the Pungo Ridge going this way and the marshes on the back side.''
The fertile Pungo Ridge, the high ground that forms the backbone of Virginia Beach, is what keeps a Department of Agriculture functioning in this populous city. Even though Virginia Beach has the largest population of any city in the state, it remains home to 156 farms and more than 43,000 acres of farmland.
As Barbara Henley recalls, several factors made Cullipher a good candidate for the agriculture department director when Dick Cockrell retired eight years ago. One was his ``wealth of knowledge'' of the soils and the land in Virginia Beach.
``Another of his strengths was the outlook that Louis had for the diversification of agriculture, his openness for new ideas,'' Henley says.
And an unexpected dividend of hiring Cullipher was ``getting the whole family,'' Henley adds. ``If there was a conference on anything, his wife and daughters would make cookies and come down and do the registration.''
Although Cullipher thinks corn, wheat and other crops that take large acreage will be here for some time, he believes the future of farming in Virginia Beach is in ``a gradual shift to high value crops such as fruits and vegetables, maybe cut flowers, those kinds of things,'' he says.
With Cullipher's encouragement, Virginia Beach farmers are still turning the drab March landscape green with acres of winter wheat, but the farmers also are bringing sweet corn, tomatoes, blueberries to local consumers and they are experimenting with unusual farm ``products'' such as catfish and striped bass, caught from farm ponds.
Late one afternoon recently, Cullipher's son Mike and grandson Hunter were dusting off cured sweet potatoes for market.
Cullipher was patiently showing Hunter how to wipe the good old Princess Anne County soil off the gnarled tubers. Though late and after a full day at the office, Cullipher looked relaxed and unfrazzled.
The gray blends right into Cullipher's wheat straw hair and his movements are so agile that only little Hunter standing by could give away a grandfatherly age of 59.
``This is our golf course,'' Cullipher says, dusting away at the sweet potatoes. ``I enjoy working, particularly physical work. During the day I'm tied to the office so farming is mental therapy.''
Cullipher says he provides the labor and Mike, who works as a soil scientist for the Virginia Department of Transportation in Suffolk, is the business man. At busy times, the whole family pitches in too.
``We do our farming, morning and afternoons, weekends and nights,'' Cullipher says with a laugh. ``That's why the rows are kind of crooked!'' ILLUSTRATION: HE'S A REAL DOWN-TO-EARTH GUY
[Color Photo]
ON THE COVER:
Louis Cullipher and his grandson Hunter Walsh, 3, tour the family's
farm in Pungo.
Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
Louis Cullipher, his grandson Hunter Walsh, 3; and his son Mike
Cullipher dust off sweet potatoes on the family's farm in Pungo.
``This is our golf course,'' Cullipher says. ``I enjoy working,
particularly physical work. During the day I'm tied to the office so
farming is mental therapy.''
Louis Cullipher meets with staff of the city agriculture department,
his full-time job. ``Land use is what we're talking about here in
Virginia Beach,'' Cullipher says, ``not just farm land, but septic
tanks, trees and other things.''
Staff photo by
MORT FRYMAN
Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
HIS PEERS VOTED HIM VIRGINIA BEACH MAN OF THE YEAR IN AGRICULTURE
FOR 1994: Louis Cullipher visits Winky and Bruce Henley in a
greenhouse on their Pungo farm. ``He'll do anything in the world
for you,'' Winky Henley said. ``You ask him a question, he'll find
the answer no matter how busy he is.''
by CNB