After a lot of hard manual labor, I decided on a college education

The University of the Cumberlands is the most affordable college in Kentucky, public or private, according to the recently published College Consensus. The organization published Cumberlands’ annual on-campus tuition rate for undergraduate students which is only $9,875 a year.

Don Estep is publisher of the News Journal.

I served for 19 years on the Board of Trustees at Cumberlands, but that was several years ago. I don’t ever remember cutting the cost for students. On-campus students became the focus of affordable tuition in 2019, when Cumberlands slashed tuition costs by more than half. Later, the university included free textbooks and removed all fees as part of its One Price Promise initiative for its entire student body.

This is fantastic news for students wanting to earn a degree. My journey to earn a degree started in 1957 after I graduated from Corbin High School. I wanted to be a radio announcer and I had information from Midwest Broadcasting School in Chicago. While my friends were choosing a college, I had my sights set on going to the broadcasting school, but since I had barely traveled beyond the city limits of Corbin the thoughts of going to the big city scared me away.

There I was, having graduated from high school and without any plans for my future. My dad was a highway contractor and he offered me a job. Reluctantly I took it basically because I had no other options.

My dad had to go where the job took him and at this time it was to Piqua, Ohio where the new I-75 was being built. It was humiliating but I climbed in his pickup truck with my mother and him and off we went to Piqua. From place to place in the summers my dad would find a furnished apartment and that is where we would live. In four summers, I worked all over the state of Ohio, but I also paid my way through college by doing construction work.

The first day at work I was left by myself to detach chains from anchors so the anchors could be placed in newly poured concrete. There was not a house or building in sight. I was in that shed all day. Life couldn’t be worse I thought.

The next day I joined the crew where the hard work was taking place. We were building the roadside parks along I-75. It was common labor, but the pay was good. After vibrating concrete and carrying steel and setting fence posts I knew this was not a life for me.

After a couple of weeks of hard labor, I called the admission’s office at the University of Kentucky and asked them to send me entrance forms. I calculated what I was earning and how much it would cost to go to UK.

I earned just under $1,000 for the three summer months of work and that was enough to pay my tuition, room, and board, and purchase the needed books for a full year. So, when September came, I contacted my friend and classmate, Jimmie Lockhart and his dad gave me a ride to Lexington.

My advisor was O. Leonard Press, head of the radio department. After a year Mr. Press got me a grant in aid which paid my tuition which was $80. To help with costs Jimmie and I served lunch and dinners to the young ladies at the Delta Delta sorority. We would eat first and Frankie, the cook, would give us our choice of what was on menu. If it was steak, we would pick out the choice ones.

We wore white dinner jackets and at each table we would ask their choice of drink. As a southeastern Kentucky boy who still had the local speech slang, I would say, “Who all wants milk?” After a few weeks of this one day when we entered our dressing quarters some of the girls had written with lipstick on the mirror, “Who all wants milk?”

Mr. Press and I became close friends and he helped me progress with my speech and radio announcing. We played classical music on the University’s radio station and the first time I saw the name of the composer Tchaikovsky I knew I was out of my league. But Mr. Press, who later developed the Kentucky Educational Television network, taught me the value of college and how to pronounce names like that.

The costs of getting an education offered by the University of the Cumberlands makes it possible for every student who want a college degree to afford it. Construction work pays good wages, but it was not for me. But it did help me to choose the profession I wanted.