Writer: Judy Leonard, Ed.D.
1/9/2008 Mountain Eagle, Whitesburg
Recently, while making arrangements to set up a gift for Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College (SKCTC) with a value of over $50,000 to fund the Pauline (Penny) Ritter Combs Southeast Scholars Endowment, Penny Ritter Combs began to reminisce about how the Whitesburg Campus became a reality a little over eighteen years ago. According to Penny, a conversation at lunch on a Sunday afternoon in the late 1980's between herself, her late husband, Goebel Ritter, her parents (Atha B. and Judge James M. Caudill, Sr.) and R.C. and Francis Day lead to the college campus in Whitesburg, and an opportunity for higher education in Letcher County.
Penny said, "We were talking (that Sunday) about what else our county needed. We'd opened a nursing home. The city had just purchased the Coca Cola Bottling Plant. The mayor, Jimmy Asher, had asked for suggestions for its use. The highways had bypassed us and all the communities around had a college except us. So, we thought we needed a college".
Penny RitterA few days later when Penny called Mayor Jimmy Asher to suggest that the Coca Cola Bottling Plant could be used for a college he did not agree. He had gotten all kinds of suggestions for its use. Some had suggested using it for a coal museum, some had suggested an art museum, and others said a fire department. But, Penny, who said, "I can see the students on the campus feeding the ducks on the bank of the river", did not give up.
One day after about two weeks of almost daily calls to the mayor's office to plead her case for a college in Whitesburg, Penny stopped her car by the side of the road near the Coca Cola building and crying said, "I could see it -- the college there. And, then, Jimmy called me not long after that and said he agreed that we might pursue getting a college to locate in Whitesburg after all. He said he'd use his expertise as an attorney to help us set up a structure to make it possible".
Not long after Jimmy Asher called Penny to say that, indeed, a college just might work in the Coca Cola building. He set up a meeting that was held at the Courthouse Café between Penny, her father, Judge Caudill, Sr., Charles "Red" Sellars, Dean of Student Affairs at Southeast Community College, and Dr. W. Bruce Ayers, President of the College to outline the idea. Since Southeast was already offering a few classes in Whitesburg and other sites in Letcher County in borrowed space, the idea of a permanent location was appealing to Dr. Ayers and to Mr. Sellars.
But while there was interest in the idea, Dr. Ayers explained that time was short. He said that he'd have to make a formal proposal to the Chancellor of the Community College System, then a part of the University of Kentucky, at the end of that week. And, he told the group it would take a lot of money, explaining that the College did not have the funds to renovate the Coca-Cola building.
Penny went on to say, "I think the city had paid $161,000 for the building. We (by then the group of interested citizens had formed the Whitesburg Education Development Foundation, Inc. -- April 4, 1989) wanted to buy the mortgage on the building from the city. Then, we could mortgage the building, advertise for bids, borrow against the building and remodel it. About ten of us signed the note to borrow the funds for the remodeling".
She remembers that, "we hit the road running -- getting pledges and donations -- whatever we could secure from businesses and the public in general. And, it grew from that. We had a radio show and people called in to pledge as little as a dollar and as much as a thousand dollars. Every major coal company operating in Letcher County, some doctors, and different businesses gave us donations. The E.O. Robinson Trust made a matching donation of $142,200 as well as the Letcher County Fiscal Court, Community Trust Bank and the Bank of Whitesburg. We even sold stickers that said 'I'm backing Southeast Community College' at the Mountain Heritage Festival".
Another community leader, Josephine Richardson invited Mary Bingham, whose family owned the Louisville Courier-Journal for many years, to donate to the project, and "she sent us $50,000". Later Mary Bingham was invited to come and see the college. She came and spent one weekend with local author Harry Caudill and his wife Ann. Penny said, "I never left Mary's side -- talking to her -- wanting more money. I said we needed it. She said that she'd given money to many things that had disappointed her, but that she was impressed with the college in Whitesburg. In fact, she was so impressed that she gave another $100,000 -- for a total of $150,000 -- to the project. In all, we (the Whitesburg Education Development Foundation, Inc.) raised over one million dollars".
Penny recalls that, "people said we couldn't raise the money in time, but we did and a college (Southeast's Whitesburg Campus) was born here in 1990. The night before the college opened work was still going on. I prayed that night and asked the Lord to let one person show up. The next day I was called along with the other members of the foundation and told to come over to campus. We went and it was a madhouse. There were cars everywhere. No one could get out of the neighborhood to go to work".
In all almost 400 showed up that first year. The average age of those in attendance was 29, and 75 percent were female. As of this year, the Whitesburg Campus has been open eighteen years, with a total enrollment nearing 500. Penny says, "My greatest joy is to see the students walking to our campus. It (the college) is my legacy -- educating our people is the love of my heart".
In Southeast's Partners in Progress Campaign, in addition to the gift of the renovated Coca Cola Bottling Building (in the 1990's) from the Whitesburg Education Development Foundation, Inc. that Penny helped to start, Penny's mother and father set up the James and Atha Caudill Endowment to provide scholarships to students in Letcher County with financial need to attend Southeast.
In the college's current, Fulfilling the Promise Campaign, the Whitesburg Education Development Foundation gave a lead gift of $232,410 in 2006, made possible by income derived from a gift of land to the foundation from Maynard and Evelyn Hogg. Many others, too numerous to name here, have enabled the Whitesburg Education Development Foundation Inc. to continue to support higher education in Letcher County.
And, now, Penny's recent (December of 2007) very generous gift to the Fulfilling the Promise Campaign valued at over $50,000 will be used to help fund the College's Southeast Scholars Program, a program that targets sixth graders who show academic promise, but who do not have the means to attend college. Penny Ritter Combs has, indeed, left a legacy of her love of education to the community of Whitesburg, and to Letcher County that will live forever. She envisioned it, worked for it, gave to it, and it came to pass. It is the Whitesburg Campus of Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College.
