Just because she has left the world of turfgrass, Beth Guertal, Ph.D., has not forgotten her roots.
"I still love turf, and I'm happy to get the opportunity to still do this," Guertal said after presenting a recent TurfNet webinar. "The GCSAA has me teaching next year, which I'm really excited about, and I'm also doing the British golf show next year."
In February 2022, Guertal left her turfgrass position at Auburn after 29 years for a non-turf role at Kansas State University, where she works as a project director with the U.S. Agency for International Development to advance educational opportunities in agriculture in Third World countries. It is a job that comes with the satisfaction of helping others in need, while also being wrought with limits due to rampant crime that hinders safe travel throughout the country.
Currently, most of Guertal's work is with a half-dozen universities in crime-torn Haiti, where she and her team of four have been busy developing virtual bachelor's and master's degree programs in agriculture, horticulture, ornamentals and, yes, even a little bit of turfgrass. She works with two universities in the northern part of the country, two in the South and two more in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. The program includes training farmers in the latest food-production techniques and a Haitian version of agriculture extension.
"I work mainly in Haiti, and I'm probably going to get Guatemala soon, and do development work with the universities there to help them get on their feet," Guertal said. "In Haiti we are working on starting some certificate and degree programs in turfgrass management, because there are, especially in South Florida, a lot of Haitians who are interested in that."
Her work in Haiti as well as agreements to speak at turf conferences worldwide were derailed for about eight weeks earlier this year, when her son Will, a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard, became ill while aboard an icebreaker in Antarctica and was hospitalized in New Zealand.
"Last year, I was supposed to speak at all those events, and my oldest son became critically ill in Antarctica on the Coast Guard cutter Polar Star," she said. "Two weeks before I was supposed to go to all those shows, because they all happen in February, I had to go to New Zealand to deal with Will. He was in the hospital for almost eight weeks, I mean I was in New Zealand for eight weeks. I had five turf speaking engagements scheduled, and I just canceled everything."
Today, she and her team are looking to grow their program. They recently submitted a grant proposal that, if approved, will also have her working with universities in Cambodia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Senegal and Tanzania.
When she is not in New Zealand dealing with a medical emergency, or working in Haiti, Guertal usually can be found in her garage office in Auburn, Alabama, where she still lives despite her appointment to Kansas State. She and the rest of the team look forward to the day when they can safely travel again to Haiti.
Her ability to travel to Haiti and within the country that occupies the eastern half of the island of Hispaniola has been limited of late because of escalating gang violence.
Crime has steadily risen in parts of Haiti, namely in Port-au-Prince, since the assassination of president Jovenel Moise by Colombian mercenaries in July 2021, more than six months before Guertal began working with USAID.
The homicide rate on the island has doubled in the past two years, and gangs were responsible for killing or kidnapping more than 8,000 people in 2023 alone.
"In 2022, when the project first started, I could fly into Port-au-Prince and not feel like I was going to get kidnapped," she said.
I work mainly in Haiti, and I'm probably going to get Guatemala soon, and do development work with the universities there to help them get on their feet.
After connecting with her Haitian colleague, they would drive about 2 miles to a regional airport to connect to destinations in the northern and southern parts of the country.
"I wouldn't do that today, because I think you'd get kidnapped," she said.
"When it was at its worst, I got an email every day from USAID that if you were American, you could get your passport and one bag, get to the U.S. Embassy, and they would get you out of the country that day."
Besides murder and kidnapping, roving gangs also pillage the country of nearly everything that is not nailed down. That list of pilfered objects includes livestock and computers from the universities that Guertal and her team work with.
"It's been challenging. The gangs just take everything," she said.
"I would love to have gone to Haiti and lived there for a few months. This has been more frustrating than I thought."