This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Dillard, Freeman Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/xYB.2ACE/1556 Message Board Post: The Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation recently named Jack Dillard as Ag Communicator of the Year. Dillard, a former Marietta resident, now living in Waskom, Texas, received the award recently at the Farm Bureau's annual convention. He has written an agriculture and rural interest column for The Times, a daily newspaper in Shreveport, Louisiana, for 43 years. Dillard has missed only one column since he began writing as farm director and farm reporter for KWKH in 1959. Before entering the media profession, he was a county agriculture agent for Cooke and Gregg counties in Texas. "This is the first time and probably the one time that an award has singled out the newspaper column," Dillard said. "It humbled me and thrilled me." Dillard is the son of Mrs. Jack Dillard Sr. and the late Jack Dillard Sr. Born and raised in Marietta, he is a graduate of Marietta High School and Oklahoma State University. He and his wife, Burniece Freeman Dillard, also a former Love County resident and graduate of Meadowbrook School, have four children and eight grandchildren. Source: Marietta Monitor, Love County, July 18, 2003, page 5.