Sometimes the most meaningful legacies aren’t measured in titles or built in boardrooms—they’re grown quietly, one seed, one child, one moment at a time.
The dictionary defines “legacy” as something handed down from one person, one generation or one civilization to another. By its strictest definition a legacy involves property or money but as Rod Miller has been demonstrating over the majority of his life, it can mean something far more valuable.
A serial volunteer, Rod has invested decades of his time and expertise in the youth of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Starting as a volunteer coach for his kids’ basketball teams, he’s always delighted in helping young people get a good start on their dreams, develop self-confidence and just know someone is in their corner.
“It’s been very rewarding, you know?” he says. “I’ll be seventy in two months and these kids, they keep you young. They keep you going. It’s just amazing what they can do, you know? I just try to just help guide ’em along.”
Most recently, Rod’s help has come in the form of a pastime not often found among today’s youth. A lifelong gardener, Rod is the city’s version of Johnny Appleseed and the engine of youth gardening programs at Fort Smith Boys and Girls Clubs and in the public school system.
“I’ve always had a garden, ever since I was a kid,” Rod says. “In fact, my grandpa, he had a big old truck garden or whatever they call ’em, down in Mulberry. And man, I remember as a kid, this is a funny story, being ten, eleven years old and looking out through the pasture and all you see is tomato plants. You know how most kids had snowball fights? We had rotten tomato fights.”
Following a stint in the United States Navy, Rod worked for a Chef Boyardee plant up north. When the facility closed, he cast his eyes southward. “I came down to Fort Smith to visit my grandma,” he says. “She told me to go to the unemployment office and put in for a job at Trane, and I did. Lo and behold, I got me a job. That was 1978, I believe, and I stayed there for thirty, thirty-five years.”
Wherever he called home, Rod gardened, both for relaxation and to stretch a grocery dollar. “I always tried to make a salsa garden,” he says. “Bell peppers, jalapeños, onions and tomatoes and maybe some cilantro. You put down fifty, sixty tomato plants, you better learn to do something with it.”
The idea for incorporating gardening into Boys and Girls Clubs programming goes back nearly a decade to Jerry Glidewell, former executive director, who served the organization for forty-three years before retiring in 2022. However, it was on a smaller scale and Rod envisioned something much larger when he approached Jerry’s successor and current CEO, Beth Presley.
“Jerry wanted all the Boys and Girls Clubs to have little gardens and they had, like a little raised bed,” Rod says. “It didn’t take me long to want to go bigger than that; for example, we had a couple tomato plants, but we had one ripe tomato, and we had like ten, twelve kids. I was thinking, ‘How are we gonna split this one tomato with twelve kids?’
“I said, ‘Beth, can we have a garden?’ She said, ok, and we got our piece of ground. We started with a solid tarp, we put it down, and while we’re waiting to kill all the weed seeds and the grass, we took ten boxes Walmart gave us, we filled them full of dirt, and then we planted potatoes in these boxes.
“So, as the potatoes are growing out of the boxes, the rain would come, the boxes are splitting. Me and the kids, we got some string and we’re out there tying these boxes back up. That was our first garden out here,” Rod recalls with a laugh.
From a handful of rain-soaked boxes sprouting potatoes, the gardening space has grown to include three plats measuring forty feet by fifty feet; a hoop house that’s thirty feet by sixty feet and a greenhouse on top of that. Much of that growth was made possible through a USDA Farm to School grant, which helped fund the endeavor, while also opening the door for local school partnerships. It is enough to take Rod aback, despite having been there every step of the way.
“Just to see all this, I mean, this is worth the price of admission just to come and look at it,” he says. “Sometimes I take pictures on my phone, and I go back to the pictures with the cardboard boxes, you know, and just look at where we’re at. I’m telling you, it’s just amazing.”
The project didn’t escape the attention of other institutions in Fort Smith and beyond. Support began to grow organically—donations of blackberry plants from the University of Arkansas, fruit trees from Sutherlands. Arkansas Oklahoma Gas Corporation employees have contributed volunteer hours, alongside support from partners including OG&E, Cox, and ABB, all of whom have helped strengthen the program.
The success of the Boys and Girls Clubs projects also caught the eye of local school officials who asked Rod about getting their own gardening programs off the ground. He agreed and now raised beds at Beard Elementary and Cavanaugh Elementary are active thanks to Rod and his cadre of pint-sized helpers.
“They send a bunch of kids out there and we plant and weed, and they go out and water,” he says. “We had green beans and radishes and cucumbers; broccoli, baby bok choy. We had a little bit of everything in there.” The program continues to grow through a community garden club that meets Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon at the Evans Club, welcoming members who want to get involved and learn alongside the kids.
Rod says for as much as the kids are learning in gardening skills and soil fortification and even in tasting the produce that they grow and get to take home, the real payoff is in the relationships he sees blossom right alongside the plants.
“We just let them kind of go do their thing a little bit,” he says. “Some of these kids out here, by having to get together and work in the garden, they make friendships. I mean, that’s impressive, just to see ’em come and talk to each other. I mean, they might have met their friends for life.”
It doesn’t take more than a minute or two of conversation to get a sense of how intensely Rod believes in the power of plants to change lives and open new worlds for youngsters. Though retired, he stays plenty busy with errands, from picking up mulch and other soil fortification to how he goes out of his way to include the most kids he can in the activity. Though in the late season of his own life, he’s energized by every new planting season and all that is to follow as the seedlings — both of the vegetable and human variety — take root and flourish.
“People ask me why I do this, and you gotta have a passion for it, to take a seed and plant it, put it in some dirt and watch it grow,” he says. “But let me tell you something else; in this garden over here, the kids put down their phones for two hours, and they socialize and I get ’em working together. One time I told them they were going to run a drip line and when they finished, they came and got me and said, ‘Hey, let’s turn on the water and test it.’ Lo and behold they did it!
“I’m telling you, this garden over here is better than what I ever expected. Everybody in the community wants to help. People always say it’s a lot of work, but you know what, really, it’s not a lot of work. This is the good stuff, you know? I always say, this is the good stuff.”
Volunteer or donate to support the garden! Visit FSBGC.org, or contact Beth Presley at bpresley@fsbgc.org, or 479.782.7093.
