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Tina Marie Acker is a pretty, enthusiastic teenager who is
just beginning her reign as Chester County’s first Dairy
Princess in eight years.
The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Acker, Chester
Springs RDI, Tina is one farm girl who believes in keeping
fit, not just be drinking lots of milk and milking cows, but by
working hard on her hobbies of gymnastics and figure
skating.
During The winter the days can get pretty hectic for the 16-
year-old. She attends Downingtown Area High School where
she will be a senior, then arrives home to spend three hours
, helping to milk her father’s 190 head of Holsteins and then is
off to three hours of teaching gymnastics and practicing.
Tina has an arrangement whereby she teaches gymnastics
in exchange for taking lessons herself. Consequently, she
spends Monday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings and part
of Saturday working with groups of four or five children on
all the gymnastic equipment. In the summer she doesn’t
work quite as hard, with classes just one day a week, but just
so she doesn’t get out of shape, she works out often on the
balance beam that has been installed on a grassy area at her
home, and she said she “tumbles on the grass”.
Also in the summer she figure skates (to help keep her
figure!), and goes once a week for lessons and once for
practice. The one thing her hectic schedule does is “makes
me skip a lot of meals”. She said she often finds herself
eating supper at 10:00 at night after finishing all her classes.
Not surprisingly, Tina hopes to attend West Chester State
College and major in physical education, although she says
her real dream is to be a professional ice skater.
In high school, Tina is taking a combination of business and
academic courses, and is a member of the leader’s club,
which means that she aides the physical education teacher.
She works with grades ten, eleven and twelve, and said she
takes roll in the classes and demonstrates the use of equip
ment, particularly gymnastic equipment.
Tina exudes the radiant good looks of a healthy farm girl,
and as rite talks about her life on the farm you can tellthat it
not only agrees with her physically, but has bad a big in
fluence on shaping her down-to-earth, outgoing personality.
About country life she says, “I sure do enjoy it. You’re
never cooped up and can always be outside.” She said she
goes to school mostly with town residents, and sometimes
they like to tease her about bung a farm girl. “But,” she
says, “I learned to give it right back. They used to call me
‘milkmaid’.”
Demonstrating her skill on a balance beam, Tina,
goes a split.
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Chester County’s Enthusiastic Dairy Princess
by: Sally Bair
Farm Feature Writer
X,
Tina Marie Acker . . .
Tina works with a junior calf which is being sold as a project animal to a 4-Her.
She added that most friends like it that she lives in the
country. One friend, in fact, is staying with the Ackers this
summer and helps with the morning milking and other work.
Tina says, “I learned a lot living on a farm, and number
one is respect • respect for everyone. Sometimes it’s
frustrating when I want to go away and there’s work to be
done, but tiie work still has to be done.”
As Dairy Princess she says, “I would like to get out and
speak to people my own age. I would tell them their future is
really dependent on them. I’d like to compare the health and
nutrition of milk with that of Coke.”
She admits she might be a little hesitant to speak in her
own school where she knows everyone, but die said, “Put me
up in front of a group of strangers and I’ll speak freely.”
She says she would also like to clear up some of the false
impressions the general public seems to have about farmers,
including the current idea that farmers are getting lots of
money from the high cost of food. “I would like to get people'
to stop looking down on milk, and to get them to buy it and
drink it.”
She added that she would welcome invitations to speak to
civic organizations.
Tina says she “can’t wait for the state Dairy Princess
contest,” and thinks the training program for all the dairy;
princesses “will be a lot of fun.” She adds that she will do her
best to win the state contest for Chester County.
One of the questions to which Tina responded at the local
contest was the question of women working outside the home.
She said emphatically then that she feels women belong in
the home caring for their families. However, she tempered
that statement in the interview by saying, “I think women
should prepare themselves for a career. People do not
always look ahead, and are sometimes not prepared for
tragedy when it happens. Women should be prepared to
support their families if it should become necessary.”
When asked about the future of dairying, Tina replied, “I
sometimes think dairying is going downhill, but I think if we
all stick together we can boost it up.”
Some of the qualities a young man needs if he is entering
dairying, Tina says, are “a good will to work, good muscles,
money to back him up and a kind heart.”
She blushed and replied “yes” when asked if she would
marry a dairy farmer. “A couple of years ago I didn’t think I
would,” she admitted, “but now I see the light and I think I
would.” She added with a laugh, “Even if I had to get up in
the morning and milk.”
Tina has been a 4-H’er for six years and currently owns
four animals she will be showing this summer. She said she
also helps show her father’s animals. She said, “I love
showing -1 can’t wait for the show season.” She helps with
preparing the animals for show, and said most are broken for
leading, but she helps clip, wash and lead the animals so
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they’re in tip-top shape for show day. b
Tina entemi the Miss Chester CountyJunlor Miss contest
this summer and has gone through one preliminary seSsiqn of j
interviews and talent. She’s now waiting tohear if she
chosen one of the 15 finalists. Her talent was, naturally,
three-minute gymnastic routine.
Tina says she’s allergic to bay, which gets her off the hook
as far as haymaking is concerned. However, she helps with
the milking every evening, and sometimes helps in the
morning “when the hired help doesn’t show up”.
She often helps with the cooking, and says she sometimes
has to cook breakfast for everyone, including the hired help.
Her mother says she’s a good cook.
Her favorite dairy food is milk - cold from the refrigerator
(Continued on Page 21]
Tina proudly holds up nature's perfect food and as
soon as the picture was taken she quickly drank it
down. '
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