Star-News, which described his brief directorship as "a new and enlightened era" in Alabama farming. York's vision of the Alabama Extension was that of an organization committed to the economic betterment of the state as a whole, rather than only to the farming sector or to urban Alabamians with lawn and gardening problems. He was a vocal supporter of cooperation with other groups, calling on extension educators to "make these other groups members of our own team rather than [to] compete with them by attempting to do the total job by ourselves." Perceiving the need for a highly trained and qualified staff, York developed a liberal study program to allow extension professionals to qualify for leave to pursue advanced degrees while earning full pay. York also established a practice of replacing vacancies only with professionals with advanced degrees—a policy credited with greatly enhancing the quality of Alabama Extension programming. York is remembered for ending the long-standing public perception that the Alabama Extension was hopelessly entangled in local, state and even national politics. One of his earliest actions as the new Alabama Extension director was to remove the organization from partisan politics. He invited the senior county extension agents to a dinner, all of whom had actively used their positions in state and local politics, and announced to his shocked audience that anyone who used his position for political gain or influence in the future would be summarily fired. In 1961, at the request of U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, York took a planned leave of absence as director of the Alabama Extension to serve as the administrator for the federal Extension Service (now the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service) in Washington, D.C., and became the youngest person to ever hold the position. University administrator Instead of returning to Auburn University as he originally planned, York accepted an offer to be the provost for agriculture at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. Later, he also served as the university's vice president for agricultural, natural and human resources, and its executive vice president. During his tenure at Florida, he was credited with implementing far-reaching changes. He was remembered for merging the College of Agricultural Life Sciences, the Florida Cooperative Extension Service, and the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station under the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) in 1964. He established the Center for Tropical Agriculture, which extended IFAS'