Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 17, 1993 TAG: 9304170120
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
QUARTERBACK IS A HOMEMAKER; YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT?
IT MAY SEEM strange that the state and national presidents of Future Homemakers of America are guys. But it is only one of many ways the group had changed over the past 20 years.
When Gate City's junior varsity quarterback signed up for home economics - and membership in the Future Homemakers of America - none of his teammates snickered.
They didn't tease him. They never even raised an eyebrow.
"The other football players were in the class with me," said Nick Rhoton, who, four years later, prepares to step down as the state organization's president and run for that seat nationally. He's in town this weekend with 11 of his classmates - and 600 other Virginia students - for the Future Homemakers' state leadership conference at the Roanoke Airport Marriott.
"At home in my school, everyone knows what I do and they're very proud of me," Rhoton said.
So impressed are the students back home they've been bucking a national trend by joining the club in droves.
Gate City - a Scott County community known more for its beefy defensive linemen than its beef stew - adds more than a dozen new names to its Future Homemakers' roster each year. And nearly half of them are guys.
That's not as unusual as it sounds, said Alan Raines, the organization's national executive director and the first male to hold that post. While national membership has seen dramatic declines over the past 20 years, the number of males signing up has grown steadily.
Male membership in Future Homemaker chapters across the country climbed from 3 percent in 1973 to 16 percent this year, Raines said. The national president is also male.
But at the same time, overall membership dropped from more than 445,000 to roughly 265,000, Raines said.
He blames the population shift from rural to urban centers, where Future Homemaker chapters traditionally flounder. City kids tend to work after school, Raines explained, leaving less time for extracurricular activities.
And then there's the name.
It conjures up Betty Crocker.
"I wish I could say there was no longer a stigma," Raines said.
But despite an overhaul of home economics curricula across the country - shifting the focus from cooking and sewing to resume writing and how to apply for home mortgages - many still think of the club as a breeding ground for June Cleavers.
They know better in Gate City, said Rhoton.
"People don't pay attention to the negative connotation," he said. "They call the classes we take `Life Management Skills.' In theory, that's a class everyone who's going to live needs."
The course teaches everything from good nutrition to balancing checkbooks to how to prevent teen pregnancy.
Of the male students it attracts, about half play some type of sport, said Debbie Kilgore, the Future Homemaker adviser at Gate City High School.
That wasn't always the case. The school had dropped home economics entirely, then picked up the revamped curriculum seven years ago, Kilgore said.
Students changed their minds about it after the school required all seventh-graders to take the course one year, she said.
Kilgore also recruited boys for the class, particularly athletes.
Rhoton, a wide receiver and quarterback on the junior varsity football team, lettered in three sports: basketball, tennis and golf.
"Eight or nine of 10 guys [in the class] are not considered `wimps,' " Kilgore said.
It helps that there's national precedent for macho guys hopping on board the Homemaker bandwagon. People like Bo Jackson and Heisman trophy winner Herschel Walker joined the group when they were in high school. So did Garth Brooks.
Of course, not every Gate City athlete who takes "Life Management Skills" becomes a member of Future Homemakers. But most of them do - about 95 percent, Rhoton estimated. That translates into 104 Gate City High School students and 97 Middle School students who call themselves Future Homemakers.
Soon, they hope to call themselves something else.
"It's time for a change," Rhoton said. "What our name is doesn't signify what we do."
In July, the national membership will vote on the issue. Suggested new titles include Leaders Impacting the Family; Family and Community Leaders and Future Leaders of America.
Connie Rhoton, Nick's mother and the state conference coordinator, said she'd be surprised to see any of those names garner the two-thirds vote necessary to make the change. But she expects the group to appoint a task force so a new name can be in place by 1995, when Future Homemakers will celebrate its 50th anniversary.
A former Future Homemaker and home economics teacher for 15 years, Connie Rhoton said she was proud of her son but would have been shocked if a boy were elected president when she joined the group in 1968.
"It would have been like having a girl in Future Farmers of America," said Sandy Blackwell, Gate City's basketball coach.
That wouldn't happen today, of course.
Future Farmers doesn't have a chapter in Gate City.