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US (TX): Master Sergeant goes to college after seeing importance of plants

From the air, while traveling to various deployments in her more than 30-year career, U.S. Army Master Sgt. Sherrie Yeates realized a correlation between the look of the land and the state of its people.

“Over the Midwestern U.S., you see pastures with livestock, shade trees and ponds. You see rolling fields of corn, wheat, sorghum and soybeans, all intersected by long curving rivers,” she said. “It’s easy to see that we in the USA truly live in a land of plenty.”

“When I flew into Iraq and Afghanistan, however, I looked down and saw nothing – just vast expanses of cracked, unplowed dirt dotted with small mud buildings. On the ground, I observed huge areas littered with war-torn, broken irrigation systems and learned that the area previously produced rich, fertile crops,” Yeates recalled. “I wondered aloud about the people there, ‘What do they eat?’”


Army Master Sgt. Sherrie Yeates is on her way to becoming Master Gardener Sherrie Yeates. Retired after more than 30 years in the military, Yeates completed a bachelor’s of horticultural sciences degree at Texas A&M University and graduated in December 2016. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Kathleen Phillips)

Something was missing in areas that lacked healthy agriculture, and if she was going to do anything about it, Yeates realized, she lacked something as well — a college degree.

Though she considers herself a lifelong learner, Yeates’ first priority and loyalty to the military meant she could only find time to take an occasional college-level course, but she was never in an area long enough to complete a degree.

On Dec. 16, however, the now-retired Yeates will walk the stage at Texas A&M University to pick up a bachelor’s of science in horticulture.

Read more at AgriLife Today
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