A College for Appalachia by Searles P. David;

Author:Searles, P. David; [P. David Searles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

Faith and Friends Sustain Us

THE CANEY CREEK COMMUNITY CENTER and its educational department, Caney Junior College, were able to exist only because they could raise money for operating expenses and capital improvements from private sources outside the Appalachian region. During the course of her forty-seven years at the center, Alice Lloyd raised about $2.5 million in cash contributions and a very large amount in non-cash donations ranging from books to kitchen equipment to used clothing.1 To put the $2.5 million in cash into a more meaningful perspective, one can think of the sum as equalling about $20 million in 1990 dollars.2

In the earliest years the center would spend, and need to raise, about $20,000 each year. Once the junior college program came into being, however, the annual expenses increased significantly. In 1927, for example, operating expenses were about $50,000. By the 1950s annual expenses were about $75,000, and at the time of her death in 1962 the center’s budget regularly exceeded $100,000.3

Spending in any given year was dictated by what could be raised, not by what was needed. Rarely was the school spared a sense of impending financial disaster. Lloyd was continually fending off those to whom she owed money, begging for more credit, more time to pay, and special treatment because of the nature of her work. A typical example of the length to which she had to go is found in a letter from Lloyd to a creditor dated April 20, 1936, in which she wrote, “We agree with you perfectly—we owe you 10% of all monies sent us. But [another creditor] has us cornered. He forces us to give him a check every day—whether we have money in the bank or not. Otherwise he will not sell us the food we need for the two hundred in our family.”4

Lloyd’s spending priorities were rigidly adhered to. First in line came the bare necessities of keeping school and maintaining accreditation; last in line were physical amenities (buildings and indoor plumbing), commercial creditors, and teacher salaries. The University of Kentucky’s evaluation of the state’s junior colleges in 1930, its accreditation review in 1938, and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ evaluation in the early 1960s all singled out low and unpaid teacher salaries at Caney Junior College for adverse comment.5 The school could not boast of complete indoor plumbing until the mid-1960s, and photographs from that era show a campus that still matched Lloyd’s claim of twenty-five years earlier that the college offered “plain living and high thinking.”6

Throughout its existence until the late 1960s, the college’s lifestyle was hand to mouth. But that is not the important point. Virtually all of the benevolent institutions in the mountains suffered from financial problems and many failed during these difficult times. What is important is that the center did raise enough money and it did survive. There is agreement among all of those familiar with the school’s past that Lloyd saw the job of raising money as primarily hers. Although finding money

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