Brooke Bradford found out she had been elected state president of Arkansas FFA the same day she found out she had been named a U.S. Presidential Scholar for 2020.
“I was doing the happy dance, for sure,” she said, smiling. “I was sitting at my favorite coffee shop here in Clinton when my mom called me. She was bawling. … I thought she was calling about the FFA election, which was still a few hours away (done virtually this year because of the pandemic). She said, ‘You’ve been named a Presidential Scholar.’ I started crying, too.”
Bradford, 18, a daughter of Wayne and Lacy Bradford of Shirley, has an older sister, Tori, 19, who will enter nursing school in July.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s website, ed.gov, 161 high school seniors received the Presidential Scholar award “for their accomplishments in academics, the arts and career and technical education fields.” Bradford is designated as a U.S. Presidential Scholar in Career and Technical Education.
“This is really an honor,” Bradford said, adding that Arkansas had three students who were honored this year. “I found out in May that I was a semifinalist from Arkansas. I was excited about that but thought I had no chance to be named a finalist. I think there were only 20 students named in the Career and Technical Education category.”
Bradford said that normally, the Presidential Scholars are invited to the White House in the summer, when the president presents them with a medallion, but this year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the medals will be mailed to the honorees.
She said that while she will certainly miss the trip to Washington, D.C., this summer, she was looking forward to a trip to Hot Springs, where she and other state FFA leaders will gather at Camp Couchdale to make plans for the 2020-2021 FFA year.
Bradford readily admits that she does not come from an agriculture background and knew little about FFA until she was in the eighth grade.
“I absolutely have no agriculture background. My grandparents had a few cows, and some neighbors had a few cows, but we did not,” she said.
“When I was in eighth grade, Clinton schools offered an introduction to agriculture class. My junior high counselor said, ‘I see you have a blank on your schedule. You could take study hall or this ag class. You are good at leadership; you might like [the ag class].’ Some of my buddies were taking the ag class, so I thought, ‘Why not?’” Bradford said.
“I took it and fell in love with it. The more I got involved, the more success I had with it,” she said. “When I was in ninth grade, I went to the state conference and learned even more. I saw the state officers in action and knew then I wanted to be state president one day.
“I started to get my name out there and started meeting as many people as I could. I worked and worked, and in April of this year, I submitted my application to run for president. The state convention was held virtually this year, and on May 20, I was elected by the members to serve as president.”
Bradford and the other state officers left June 8 for Camp Couchdale, where they will live for most of the summer, leading FFA leadership camps, “as social distancing will allow,” she said. They will also make plans for the coming year’s state activities. She said state officers will travel across the state during the coming year, attending various FFA functions.
Bradford will be a freshman at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in the fall. She plans to study agriculture communications and political science and hopes to go on to law school.
“I don’t necessarily want to practice law,” she said. “I would love to lobby in D.C. for agriculture.”
Bradford served as president of the Clinton FFA and the Clinton 4-H Club. She was a member of the Beta Club, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Clinton Area Rotary Club. She also served as lieutenant governor of Arkansas Girls State.
In May, Bradford graduated as salutatorian of her senior class. She received several scholarships and monetary awards: a $9,000 University of Arkansas Honors College Academic Scholarship, a $4,000 Arkansas Rice Reps Scholarship, $1,500 in Arkansas Farm Bureau Discussion Meet awards, $4,550 in Miss Arkansas Outstanding Teen awards, a $750 Marvin Vines Memorial Scholarship from Arkansas FFA, $1,000 from the U of A Dale Bumpers College Division of Agriculture, $500 from the Clinton Area Rotary Club and $225 from the Clinton Alumni Association.
In addition to FFA activities, Bradford has been a contestant in the Miss Arkansas Outstanding Teen pageant for the past several years. She won fourth runner-up in 2019, competing as Miss Spirit of Arkansas.
“I plan to step back from the pageant world until I finish my FFA responsibilities as state president,” she said.
Bradford adapted her love of agriculture to her pageant career, developing a platform called Planting Seeds: The Importance of Agriculture Education.
“Through it, I work to teach kids that food isn’t born in the grocery store and advocate for agriculture through my social-media platforms,” she said. “You would be amazed at how many kids think chocolate milk comes from a brown cow.”
Chad Mooney, vocational agriculture teacher and FFA adviser at Clinton High School, said he has known Bradford “since she was 5 or 6.”
“Her parents are friends of the family,” he said.
“Brooke is something else,” Mooney said, laughing. “She is so driven. … She sets a goal and achieves it. She is very meticulous in the way she does things.
“She is very goal-oriented in whatever she does. I can see her being a senator one day … even the first woman president. Her opportunities are unlimited.”
Mooney coached Bradford in her three first-place honors at FFA state conventions — Extemporaneous Public Speaking and the Farm Bureau Discussion Meet in 2019 and Agronomy in 2018.
“I have competed in every leadership-development contest and figured out that I thrive on speaking to a crowd, and I feel most confident with a microphone in my hand,” Brooke wrote in her letter to Arkansas FFA members as she was campaigning for the state presidency.
Bradford nominated Mooney for the Presidential Scholars Program’s distinguished-teachers recognition. Mooney was recognized in 2018 as the Arkansas Farm Bureau’s Outstanding Ag Educator.