HIGH POINT – Dr. Max Sink, a retired veterinarian, and his wife, Dorothy, owe a special debt to 4-H. The two met at a 4-H square dance in Greensboro in 1950, and in February 1952, they married.

Both began 4-H when they were young. Dorothy, called “Dot,” began food, clothing and gardening projects when she was in the sixth or seventh grade in her native Cleveland County, and she continued through her years at Woman’s College, which now is The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her first job was as an extension agent working with 4-H in Guilford County. She only kept the job for about a year, because Max joined the military, and she relocated to teach at Gardner-Webb College in Boiling Springs.

Now, the Sink’s daughter, Linda Sink Hyder, is an extension agent working with 4-H in Tennessee.

For Max, 4-H was inseparable from his early life on a farm in Linwood.

“My daddy had cows, and my brother Homer and I had to get up and milk them before school, and then I drove the school bus,” Max said.

As a boy, Max wanted to have a dairy farm when he grew up, and he reared cows and grew corn in 4-H through high school. At college at N.C. State University, he majored in animal husbandry. He served in the Army for two years, then attended veterinary school through the GI Bill.

Max practiced veterinary medicine from 1958 until his retirement in 1999 at Guil-Rand Veterinary Hospital, specifically set up on the south end of High Point to be near local farms. Much of his practice involved large farm animals, and he remembers saving one farmer’s prized cow, which earned him that man’s devotion.

As a practicing veterinarian, Max continued to be involved with 4-H on the state level and at his practice, where students often would come for help with their 4-H projects.

“4-H tied me to the farm life, and it’s still in me,” he said. “That’s why we live on this place (a farm near High Point). My friends play golf, and golf courses are man made, but gardens are nature made. There’s nothing like putting seeds in the ground and seeing them grow.

“4-H kept me in touch with farming and livestock, and I continue to be around both.”

Dot credits 4-H with providing an outlet when she was young and for skills it taught her, such as organizing projects and pubic speaking.

It also, she said, allowed her to get away from home and meet other people, especially a young fellow 4-H’er in 1950.



vknopfler@hpe.com | 888-3601