It’s all about head, heart, health and hands in 4-H.

Use your head, give it all you’ve got from the heart, stay healthy doing it and don’t be afraid of hands-on work. Volunteer.

The 4 “Hs” are life lessons. Practice them and go far.

If there was a fifth “H” it would be “help” and the lesson would be: Don’t be afraid to ask for it, don’t neglect to offer it.

That’s what good neighbors do.

That’s what Scott Murphy did.

He’s an ordinary guy, making an extraordinary impact in a short time.

“Scott was an excellent choice,” said Melissa Koch, Mower County’s 4-H programming coordinator. “He just sort of stumbled into the office and volunteered to help.”

“We couldn’t turn him down, because we needed him,” Koch added.

“The kids loved him and they listened to him. He was the chaperone and supervisor. A real role model. It was the perfect match,” Koch said.

What Murphy did to endear himself was a simple task: He agreed to accompany the Mower County 4-Hers, who took their livestock projects to the 2008 Minnesota State Fair.

Nineteen Mower County 4-Hers came home with purple — grand champion — ribbons, representing the pinnacle of success.

Seventeen of the 19 exhibited livestock projects: swine, goat, steer and sheep.

True, the 4-Hers parents were there to watch over their children and teenagers and females had their own chaperones, but Murphy got up-close and personal with 4-Hers like never before.

He was there in the Bailey Hall dormitory with the male competitors. He was at show ring-side for the competition. He saw bright smiles on the faces of the 4-Hers, who won and the frowns of resignation on those who lost.

Mower County sent 159 projects — the vast majority livestock — to the 2008 Minnesota State Fair. More than 100 in all.

Murphy’s job: protect and serve the 4-H families’ loved ones, make sure they got to the right show ring at the right time and date, watch over them at night.

Put yourself in Murphy’s shoes: Could you corral all those 4-Hers away from home on the last holiday weekend of summer among the thousands at the State Fair?

Answer: Maybe.

And how many of the 4-Hers knew the young man acting as their body guard at the State Fair is one of America’s citizen soldiers? Even a hero many would say.

There was definitely more to meet the eye than any first glance at the young man.

One deployment, then

another

Murphy is the son of Mike and Carol Murphy and grew up on the family farm west of Austin.

He has an older brother and sister and a younger brother.

He graduated from Austin High School in 1998 and went to Riverland Community College to study criminal justice and corrections in a law enforcement curriculum.

He joined the Minnesota Army National Guard in January 2000, and it is his service to his country that is a large part of the make-up of the young man.

He is a specialist whose job in the Army is “wheeled vehicle operator,” or truck driver.

“In 2004 I started training for deployment to Iraq,” he said. “January 2005 was when we hit Iraq.

“It was Bravo Company at the time and now it is redesignated Fox Company,” he said. “I’ve been with the Austin unit since I joined the National Guard.”

The unit returned home from its Iraq deployment in October 2005.

A second deployment into harm’s way interrupted the citizen soldier’s life less than two years later.

“We started training for duty in Kosovo in June 2007,” he said. “That was at Camp Atterbury Indiana. We also spent a month in Germany that September.”

When Murphy arrived in Kosovo, his military duties differed from those he pursued in Iraq.

While so much attention is devoted on the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, where the hunt for the Sept. 11 terrorists began, receives less scrutiny.

Meanwhile, American soldiers are also serving in harm’s way in another armed conflict in northern Europe.

Albanian and Yugoslav security forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group seeking secession from the former Yugoslavia, clashed.

Despite the intervention of NATO, including U.S. Armed Forces, an uneasy peace remains today and American citizen soldiers are a part of the peace-keeping force.

“We didn’t do transportation over there,” Murphy said. “We were part of a liaison monitoring team.

“We did a lot of stuff with local citizens. If we had any issues in our area, we would get their perceptions about such things as independence,” he said.

“The people really loved us over there,” he said of the home visits to Albanian families, which he completed with a Polish soldier, who was part of the NATO forces. “It was a very poor area and a border town.”

After a nine-month deployment, Murphy returned home with his unit July 10.

He has 3 1/2 years left on his contract with the National Guard.

Before his deployment, Murphy worked as a detention deputy in the Mower County Jail; a job he plans to return to when his current time off ends.

Presently, he is fixing up a home on Austin’s northwest side.

That is, when he’s not being a role model to Mower County 4-Hers.

‘Putting time to good use’

Murphy is a 4-H graduate himself. He showed dairy cattle during his 12 years in 4-H, and also took prize-winning entomology projects to the State Fair.

“It was a good experience for me,” he said. “I enjoyed being out there and talking to people about their projects.”

During his 4-H years, his interest in entomology was fueled, in part, by living on a farm and studying how pests destroy crops.

Then, he left 4-H behind, became a corrections officer and soldier and pursued other interests until returning to the Mower County Fair this summer.

Murphy worked for the Mower County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse, patrolling the fairgrounds. “I helped them out for the last weekend of the Fair,” he said.

Then, one day he visited the Mower County Extension Service office and volunteered … again.

“I remember when I was in 4-H, they always had a problem finding chaperones,” he recalled. “I thought I would go into the office and see if I could help. I had the time off and wanted to put it to good use.”

Murphy had 25 to 30 male 4-H exhibitors to supervise each day/night of the weekend’s livestock shows.

Female 4-Hers had their own chaperones: Amanda Amick and Carmen Thompson.

“It was good duty,” he said of his volunteer work. “They were all very well-behaved kids. I was rather impressed.”

“They were all in by the time the curfew said they were supposed to be in the dormitory,” he said.

The judging took place sometimes at the same time: sheep exhibitors here, swine there, dairy elsewhere.

“They all knew where they had to be for the judging. I couldn’t be in more than one place at a time,” he said.

When Murphy, 29, was a 4-Her and the temptation existed to get into trouble at the State Fair, he didn’t.

“I was a member of the old Telstar club and, no, we didn’t get into a lot of trouble at that age. We were pretty ordinary kids,” he said.

Murphy’s ordinariness is what makes him extraordinary: soldier, detention officer, 4-H role model.

The common thread connecting the young man’s pursuits is obvious: using his head, heart, health and hands to help others.

Give him a purple ribbon.