Jim Fizzell is off on just another average day-if you could consider any of this county extension agent`s days just average.
First he tapes a radio segment with Orion Samuelson at WGN studios, fielding questions from the announcer on everything from rose bushes to tomato crops.
Then he motors over to Soldier Field for a look at how the Chicago Bears` turf is doing. ”We`ve core-aerified four times this year already,” confides the man who has tackled turf problems at Wrigley Field, golf courses and suburban backyards for more than 20 years.
Then he travels back up Michigan Avenue for an interview before finally heading out of the city and to his office in the Northwest suburbs for his real work: Helping folks cure all manner of garden headaches.
Call him a lawn doctor, if you like. A plant physician maybe?
Formally, Fizzell`s title is senior horticultural adviser for the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service in North Cook County. His primary charge is to help commercial growers of everything from turf to greenhouse crops to trees and shrubs in the entire six-county metro area. Fizzell`s the man commercial growers call when they need a doctor who makes house calls.
But his job goes far beyond that. Fizzell (pronounced fi-ZELL), 55, also supervises an office in Rolling Meadows where one staffer and 40 volunteers try to handle homeowner requests for information about why their lawns are brown, their trees are dying and ants are invading their households. Those requests run upward of 28,000 a year, most of them between March and October. ”I love extension work, I love to be out there in the field solving problems,” says Fizzell, who regularly conducts seminars for commercial growers.
He has to love this system, considering he is a U. of I. adjunct faculty member and considering budget cuts have taken a vast toll on a program that meets more requests for information than almost any other taxing body.
”Jim is one of our top people because of his ability to communicate, to share his knowledge,” said Jim Oliver, associate director of the extension service responsible for urban programs and Fizzell`s supervisor. ”He is well- known throughout the area and a very effective teacher. He is requested for out-of-state speaking programs more than any other staffer.
”In horticulture, we have five people to serve 7 million people,” in the Chicago area, Oliver said. ”That`s a tremendous responsibility. Our resources have been cut back and the demand has gone up, particularly with increased interest in environmental issues-pesticides, for instance, or composting-people don`t have an understanding of those issues.
”The staff can really get stressed out between the size of the job and the gap between resources and demand.”
Fizzell`s success in more than 20 years of dealing with the system is to build networks. The most visible is his media work.
”We have five phone lines and there`s never a dead line when Jim is on,” said Samuelson, WGN radio`s farm director.
”He`s been on the Saturday noon show for at least the last 25 years. He is one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever known. He takes calls live, without reference material, and provides answers that are articulate and knowledgeable.
”With the Cooperative Extension Service as strapped as it is with funds, there is a need to get to the people with a public forum. We provide that.”
Fizzell started in the Extension Service in 1958. He moved to Michigan with Whirlpool Corp. in 1964 to design environmental controls for
horticultural crops.
He also built a commercial greenhouse that he sold to a partner when he moved to California. There, Fizzell ran a rose production greenhouse complex of 500,000 square feet. He moved on to Colorado where he established Colorado Roses Inc.
”I was a developmental manager, which by its nature is self-elimination work,” he said. ”Finally, the Extension Service convinced me to come back, and I was ready. That was in 1971.”
By then, Fizzell`s marriage had broken up. He has three children, now 35, 33 and 31, and eight grandchildren. He became involved in church work and met his current wife, Jane. They were married nearly 16 years ago and live in Park Ridge.
”The first time we went out, I was crazy with plants,” Jane recalled.
”I took him around my apartment and told him the name of every single plant and their botanical names. I asked him what he did and he said he was a horticulturist.”
Although unsure of horticulturist`s specific skills, Jane soon found out that Fizzell was an expert on the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers or ornamental plants.
She also found out that Fizzell is a quick study.
”He`s like a walking encyclopedia,” she said. ”He reads an article and he retains it and can recite it three or four days later.”
Jane, a dentist`s assistant, uses many of the same phrases that others use to describe Fizzell: ”Dedicated, caring, consistent, hardworking. He goes the extra mile.
”I remember we got a call from a local farmer who was having a problem with his pumpkin crop. It was 7 or 7:30 at night, pouring rain, and we just got in the car and went out there like a doctor making a house call. He said he had to, that it`s their livelihood.”
Charles McGinty, president of McGinty Brothers Inc., a Long Grove landscaping firm, has known Fizzell since they were newspaper delivery boys in the Edison Park neighborhood of Chicago. He said Fizzell has saved many a grower by knowing the right answer to a vexing problem.
”He`s a great asset to the landscape industry,” McGinty said. ”If we can`t diagnose a problem, we call him and he can always pinpoint something.” Fizzell founded and served as the first executive secretary of the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association, a trade group that lets similar businesses seek solutions to common problems. By educating the leaders, the knowledge can be passed along to the work force.
Recently, Fizzell started a program aimed at Hispanics, who make up a large portion of the landscape work force, that teaches how to deal with pesticides, among other things.
This type of networking is how Fizzell can spread his resources. He has either started or provided educational support to nurserymen, golf course superintendents, tree care professionals and sports turf managers. He trains volunteers known as master gardeners to answer questions in the extension offices.
That type of organizational skill was tapped again a few years ago when he and Jane took over the Chicago area Angel Tree program of the Council of Prison Fellowship Ministries. Its aim is to present Christmas gifts to children from parents who are serving prison terms.
”We ran it out of our house one year,” Fizzell recalled. ”We served 3,500 kids and had 200 churches involved. Jane had to quit work to do it. I set up the board, wrote the bylaws and served as its first secretary. We`re just helping this year.”
Through the program, prison inmates are asked if they have children to whom they want to send gifts and what they would like to send.
The Angel Tree program processes the requests, finds more well-to-do churches that will fund the gifts and works through churches in the children`s neighborhoods to distribute the gifts. Each child receives one toy and one piece of clothing.
”There`s a two-fold mission,” Fizzell said. ”First, if we can get a Christian committment from the inmate and secondly, if we can get the family to connect with the local church. This establishes trust and responsibility and gets the church involved in the support system. It`s like extension, one on one. It`s a slow process.”
”Jim is very dedicated. He and his wife almost single-handedly built the Christmas gift idea for inmates and their families,” said WGN`s Samuelson.
”Jane and I had asked to be assigned to Africa or Asia as missionaries, but that never developed,” Fizzell said. ”We feel we have a great mission here.”
The Fizzells are members of South Park Church, an Evangelical Christian denomination in Park Ridge.
”We have taken some families under our wings as well. We consider them friends,” he said.
”This one (Hispanic) family lives in Uptown and has a 16-year-old girl who speaks English better than you or I as a second language,” Fizzell said. ”She gets good grades, yet she asked us if she should take the SAT exams, and she doesn`t know how to go about getting a scholarship.”
As the story unfolds, the joviality gives way to genuine emotion.
”We would like to help pull her and her family out of the poverty cycle,” adds Fizzell. ”We love them like they`re our own. That`s what`s important to us.”
