Faculty, students, alumni and friends recently had the opportunity to recognize a Warnell trailblazer. In a Feb. 10 Zoom event that took the place of a Forestry Club meeting, guests welcomed Rex Benham (BSFR ’82), Warnell’s first African American undergraduate student to graduate from the school. Benham, who majored in forestry and is now an area manager for RMS LLC in Texas, Spent the better part of the hourlong program answering questions about the forestry industry, giving advice to students and sharing his experiences at Warnell. “When I was a senior in high school, I had two brothers that were attending the University. … My brothers convinced me that I needed to be a Bulldog,” said Benham during his opening remarks. He was deciding between electrical engineering at Georgia Tech or forestry at the University of Georgia. “When I got (to UGA), it was very, very surprising to me. I had never seen that many people at one time, in one place. It was something that took me a little getting used to.” As a forestry student in the early 1980s, Benham was able to watch UGA football legend Herschel Walker and basketball star Dominique Wilkins, he said, and recalled a few forestry professors, including a silviculture professor known for his classroom hijinks. Benham had a work-study job in Building 3, and he told the audience about a faculty member there making glue out of peanut hulls, testing its strength between pieces of wood. “Oh, yeah, Building 3,” he said, laughing. “I spent a lot of time there.” Now with several decades of experience managing forests across East Texas, Benham offered some words of wisdom to students looking to get into the industry. “I would think it'd be really important to have an open mind about what you will or will not do. I know I’ve found myself in a few situations beating briars with a hickory stick and wondering, ‘Is this what I really went to school for?’” said Benham. “We may have to take a position that may not be our heart’s desire, but it is one of those steppingstones that, you know, our career path has to go through.” Internships and mentors are key to setting yourself on a path to success, he added. Benham said he has mentored several summer interns through his employer, and he feels strongly that it’s important to make these types of professional connections early on, to help chart a course for your career. But these connections can begin even earlier than college. During the Q&A portion of the event, a Warnell faculty member asked about recruiting high school students to natural resources programs—especially recruiting students of color. Benham noted his early years venturing into the woods with friends and on school trips helped spark an early focus on forestry. Today, young adults don’t always have that opportunity. So, spreading the word about careers in the natural resources is imperative. “I think it would be tremendous if the university was to go to … a middle school—I think the younger you can get them, the more interest you can develop,” he said. “If you want to be more visible to black students in particular, you got to go where they are, and you got to give them an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors.” He said his wife has been telling him that he needs to write a book about what he does so his grandchildren know—not just about his career, but the path he took to get there and the benefits of the forest industry. “People don’t understand where paper towels come from. They don’t understand where toilet paper comes from. They don’t understand where disposable diapers come from,” he added. “And I think just those minimum kind of exposures like that can go a long way.” Toward the end of the online event, the panel was joined by Clint Moore, an adjunct associate professor at Warnell and acting unit leader for the Georgia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Unit. Moore also graduated from Warnell in 1982, although his interest in aquatic science kept the two from crossing paths. Nevertheless, Moore recalled his own experience in 1981, working as a summer intern with a timber crew in Northwest Georgia not far from where Benham grew up. “In that summer and in that rotation, I had an experience that just kind of shook me to the core,” said Moore. “I’d become very comfortable with the crew I was working with, and just casually, you know, just before we left to go home, I was asked if I wanted to attend a Klan rally that night.” Moore said he turned them down as coolly and quickly as he could, and the experience completely changed his summer experience. “It felt like an opening of the eyes quite a bit that summer,” he added, and since then he’s reflected on the privilege and experiences he’s accessed. Were there opportunities, Moore asked, that perhaps Benham thought he had missed out on because he was black? “One of the things that you run into (in East Texas) is that people won’t come out and openly do things or say things, but you can feel it; how they talk to you or how they don’t talk to you,” said Benham. “I mean, there’s a lot of things that if we are to come together as a people—and I’m talking people of the United States, and not necessarily black, brown, green, yellow, purple—I think that we have to acknowledge the fact that things were done a certain way, and the only way we’re going to get ahead of those kind of things is to admit it and accept it and work like crazy to change it.” As the hourlong event wrapped up, forestry professor Bronson Bullock, who was moderating the Q&A portion of the online event, asked Benham if he had any last words of wisdom for students about to enter the forestry and natural resources professions. Above all else, Benham replied, make sure that you’re following your passion. “If forestry is your love, it must be your love—you’re not going to get rich doing this, but I think you can make a good, honest, decent living,” he said. “It’s that drive that also pushes me to a limit to where I want to see this rotation of trees do better than the previous rotation of trees. And I think as you get involved with doing these types of activities, it grows on you. So, if you can get a summer job and get a taste of that, I think it’ll do you well.”
