Although she was never a 4-H member or an official 4-H club leader herself, Jean Stoll had 45 consecutive years of playing those critical roles of “4-H Mom” and “4-H Grandma” all while serving both informally and formally as a 4-H volunteer and judge at the local, county, and state levels.
Jean and Hubert Stoll raised eight children on a small grain and dairy farm near Chestnut in Logan County. In 1961, their oldest son joined the Aetna Aggies 4-H Club. And for the next 45 consecutive years of her life – until her passing in 2006, Jean Stoll had at least one child or grandchild enrolled as a 4-H member. At one point in the 1960’s, as many as 5 of her 8 children were enrolled in 4-H at a the same time and in the mid-1990’s she had 12 different grandchildren that were all members of Logan County 4-H. Her eight children were enrolled in 4-H for a cumulative total of nearly 70 years and 19 of her 26 grandchildren all spent some years enrolled as a 4-H youth member. Each child and grandchild has their own personal stories about being coached, tutored, or rescued by “Grandma Jean” during their 4-H career. Many other former 4-H members that weren’t part of the Stoll Family have their own testimonials about how Jean Stoll taught them how to sew or gave them helpful tips on cooking or giving a foods demonstration. And many Logan County residents still miss dialing-up Jean Stoll with a random food safety or food preparation question.
In the late 1960’s, Jean helped establish a new Wo-He-Lo 4-H Club in Logan County. She borrowed the name “Wo-He-Lo” from her cousin in Iowa who had heard of a 4-H club who used the first two letters of Work, Help, and Love to create the “Wo-He-Lo” name. Jean served as the club’s 4-H Share-The-Fun director in the early years and mentored countless Logan County youth with their sewing projects for four decades. Certified by the University of Illinois Extension as a Master Food Preserver, Jean spent more than a decade serving as a judge for 4-H Foods and Food Demonstrations at several different county shows. She also worked as a 4-H Foods and Food Demonstration judge at the Illinois State Fair for nearly 10 years. Jean was the designated chauffeur for the Logan County 4-H Dairy Judging Teams for nearly a two decade timespan and could always be counted on to be one of the dairy cattle leadsmen in the ring at the annual dairy judging contests at Illinois State University and the University of Illinois.
For more than 50 years, Jean was active with Logan County Home Extension. She was one of the 13 charter members of the Chestnut Happy Homemakers Extension Club who established the club on November 1, 1950; the club remained active for more than 50 years and Jean was the club’s longstanding Chair of Music and Recreation. She was a past member of the Logan County 4-H Youth Council and served as a 4-H record books judge in the county. Her commitment to 4-H lasted to her final days. She was a State Fair 4-H Judge and helped judge the county’s 4-H record books all in the last six weeks of her life.
Jean contributed to the development of the “4-H Foods Demonstration Training Guide” published by University of Illinois Extension in 2003 and was a strong advocate for also developing a supplemental 4-H Foods Demonstration training video for 4-H youth. After Jean passed on September 21, 2006, more than $2,500 of memorial contributions were designated to the Jean Stoll 4-H Fund at the Illinois 4‑H Foundation. Those memorial gifts were used to produce the “Delivering Dynamic Demonstrations DVD” released in February 2011. The DVD now serves as a lasting legacy to the contributions Jean Stoll made to the Illinois 4-H program and especially to the youth of Illinois interested in foods and food demonstrations.