By: Virginia Ely
(Eureka FFA Reporter)
Lining every street with blue corduroy jackets, kids from states ranging from Alaska to Puerto Rico, Maine to Hawaii and even Indian nations came together to experience the 2011 National FFA Convention. The Eureka FFA Officers: Elly Vance, Samuel Cottrell, Seth Schumacher, Josh Robinson, Brad Krumholz, Jacob Leman, Jodi Blunier, Rebecca Kupferschmid, Virginia Ely, and Payton Fehr were just a few of those blue jackets on the streets. They got involved in different types of sessions revolving around this years theme of “I believe”, they visited the numerous amounts of colleges with booths available, they browsed the many “stores” set up, and enjoyed fun activities that were offered to them.
The officers loaded a school bus Tuesday morning October 18th and ventured out on a trip of a lifetime. They arrived in Indianapolis, Indiana and visited a museum of western and Indian art and history. They observed many famous paintings and sculptures in the museum as well as visited the interactive part of the museum where they could try different instruments and role play different parts of western history. Although the weather was just short of awful they pushed that aside and enjoyed their time. To start off their Wednesday morning they visited the NCAA museum where they mingled with many other members from different FFA chapters from across the nation. After that they made their way to the convention center and ventured through the shoulder to shoulder crowd and visited college booths and, of course, accumulated all of the “free-bees” that were being handed out! Connected to the room full of college booths and other advertising booths was a room full of mini stores where FFA members mingled and purchased some “groovy- souvies”. That night the opening session was held at the Conseco Field house, home of the Pacers, and the key note speaker, Dave Roever, gave a very motivational speech. He brought out some of his friends that made a huge impact in his life, introduced them to us and they shared their stories. Thursday night there was a rodeo that all the members were welcome to attend followed by a concert featuring Blake Shelton, Little Big Town, and Steel Magnolia. The stadium was packed with everyone singing and dancing, it was a great experience!
Out of 543,000 FFA members over 58,000 members were participating in sessions, local museums, and fun activities. Everywhere you looked there was a blue corduroy jacket in sight. Our FFA Officers work hard every year to get a chance to travel to National Convention and can not thank the community enough for all of their support. They are looking forward to their new officer team next year to share this experience because we believe, we are FFA!
