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Citation Format: [Interviewee Last Name, First Name]. “Interview [#].” Appalachian Oral History Project. By [Name of Interviewer]. [Date of Interview]. [Medium (Digital Audio or Cassette)]. Lees College Campus: Hazard Community and Technical College. [Day, Month, Year of Access].

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APPALACHIAN ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

LEES COLLEGE

Interview with Dr. Troy Eslinger

President of Lees College

March 24, 1977

Conducted by

Greg Caudill

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CAUDILL: First, I would like to do a little biographical information for the records. Could you

tell us when you were born and your parents’ names?

ESLINGER: I was born in Georgia, August 7, 1919. Parents were Ulas and Lucinda Eslinger.

CAUDILL: Could you tell me some of your early schooling, where you went to school and so forth?

ESLINGER: I went to a two-room grade school. Walked half mile each way to seven grades, I guess, and then, this was a little country school there in the rural community where we lived. I went to Ringgold High School. Ringgold is an old, old, Georgia town that never grew very much but it is an old town. It was there during the Civil War and before that. It has a railroad running through it; I-75 passes by it, about fifteen miles from Chattanooga, Tennessee.

CAUDILL: Could you tell me where you went to college?

ESLINGER: Yes. Well, let me back up a little bit before that and say that after I graduated from high school in the middle of the Depression in 1936, I went to the McKenzie Business College at

Chattanooga for a year and then worked for a while, four or five years. The war came along and went to the Air Corps and then after that, I came to Kentucky, Centre College in Danville. After that, went to the seminary at Louisville, Presbyterian Seminary in Louisville. From that into the pastorate and then to here in 1961.

CAUDILL: What made you decide to come to Kentucky all the way from Georgia?

ESLINGER: Well, actually when I graduated from high school and went to business college at

Chattanooga, from there on, I really lived elsewhere than Georgia. I lived for the most part in

Tennessee and in coming to Centre, I really was coming from Tennessee rather than from

Georgia. By that time, I was married and my wife was from Chattanooga but I came to Center

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College because I already had in mind entering the ministry after I finished and in talking with a counselor, in this case a minister while I was in the Air Corps, he suggested that I might want to come to Louisville and then look into Centre College, which is what I did.

CAUDILL: That was quite a jump from the Air Corps to the ministry.

ESLINGER: Right.

CAUDILL: When you were a child, as you remember the Depression and everything, was school hard to come by then, was it hard to go to school during the Depression?

ESLINGER: Well, yes, well, not to grade school, high school although we lived two and one- half miles from town, from Ringgold, and I walked those two and one-half miles each way for four years of high school. We didn’t have buses to ride then so I walked. So, it was hard from that standpoint and that was hard as was illustrated by the fact that I was one of two of the first males to graduate from high school out of that whole rural community of several hundred people.

I guess there must be a hundred or so families that live in that rural community that stretches roughly four miles north of Ringgold, Georgia to the state line, maybe a little bit farther, maybe six miles altogether, and one friend and I were the first two males to graduate from high school out of that whole rural community. Now, some girls had graduated. I had a couple of sisters older than I but I had an older brother but he didn’t graduate from high school.

CAUDILL: What happened to most of the men? Did they go off to find work or did they drop out of school or what?

ESLINGER: Well, it was a rural farming community and the girls got married and the boys just started working on the farms for the most part. Some would migrate and work in Chattanooga.

CAUDILL: That was the closest…

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ESLINGER: About fifteen miles away.

CAUDILL: So you could say that you were pretty fortunate to get through high school then?

ESLINGER: Yes.

CAUDILL: Only one of two is pretty good.

ESLINGER: Well, we started a trend. Since that time, nearly everybody graduates. We just happened to be the first two to graduate and he was a young man who, a boy, who lived just down the road from us and we walked to school together.

CAUDILL: And you went to Centre College to study the ministry?

ESLINGER: Well, I went to Centre College for my undergraduate work. For my ministerial training, I went to Louisville Presbyterian Seminary.

CAUDILL: Where did you hold your first pastorate?

ESLINGER: Pastorate, well, while I was in the seminary, I preached and served a little rural church out in Springfield. I really count that one off my first experiences and then my first experience as an ordained minister was at the end of my senior year at the seminary, was at

Millersburg, Kentucky in Bourbon County. I was there for two years. Went from there to

Pineville in the mountains of southeast Kentucky and after five years there, went back to

Lexington to a suburban church in Lexington and was there for four years before coming here in

’61.

CAUDILL: Was that common for students in the seminary to go out in the community?

ESLINGER: At Louisville Seminary, it was quite common. Nearly all of the students served in some way during their seminary days, either as an assistant minister or in educational programs

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 5 in a large church or at one of any number little small rural, small town churches all over

Kentucky and southern Indiana.

CAUDILL: I guess that is a pretty good way to get experience?

ESLINGER: Yes, yes.

CAUDILL: What motivated you to come to Lees in ’61?

ESLINGER: Well, I was approached by the search committee to come here. As I said a moment ago, I was pastor of a suburban church in Lexington, growing church in a very beautiful city, but the chairman of the search committee, called me and asked me if I would consider becoming

President of Lees. Lees at that time was in pretty serious financial condition. It has always been in more or less serious financial condition but more serious then than usual because it had gone through a series of acting presidents. The president who had been here for eight or nine years, left in ’57, I guess, ’58. Then there was an acting president for a year, ’58, ’59. Then a man was elected president in ’59. He stayed just a little over a year and resigned in the middle of the fall semester so the college was pretty desperate for some kind of leadership so they asked me to come. I won’t bother you with all of the anguish I went through trying to make that decision but I did.

CAUDILL: What factors caused you, did you want to, did you feel bad about leaving the church and coming up here to the mountains?

ESLINGER: Well, I guess how I felt could best be described with this statement that I just, I had a call from a friend in the ministry, in the pastorate who had just learned that I had come here. He said, “Well, I didn’t know that you had left the ministry.” I was quite surprised that he would say that and very quickly expressed my conviction that I had just changed the type of

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 6 ministry and that it was not really a departure from the ministry. Obviously, a departure from serving in a pastorate but I have looked upon this as a mission or a ministry that I was performing and still do.

CAUDILL: A lot of people had felt that you had left the ministry?

ESLINGER: That’s right. Yes. There are a lot of ministers who fill two jobs and I certain kept on preaching somewhere nearly every Sunday.

CAUDILL: You preach sometimes over at Ezel sometimes, don’t you?

ESLINGER: Right.

CAUDILL: How does a college president get elected, you know, the mechanics of it? How does that work?

ESLINGER: Well, there is some variation in all of those individual situations and in this case, and it is pretty general that when a president resigns from a college, so that the Board of Trustees know that they have got the responsibility of selecting a new president. Then they usually establish what is called a search committee made up of trustees and sometimes of members of the faculty and a member or two of the student body and friends of the college, but if it gets too big, there are all sorts of difficulties. In the case of Lees College when they approached me, the committee was made up entirely of trustees and they began looking around for somebody that they would like to talk to. Now, it can be very complex. Today in most situations, the vacancy will be advertised in educational journals and sometimes in the press, the public press, but mostly in educational journals such as The Chronicle of Higher Education. Advertisement will be made that the vacancy exists and anybody interested in applying for the job can write the chairman of the search committee and then screening will take place. Usually, the committee will

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 7 examine however many applications come in by mail, written applications, and list those in the order of priorities as far as they perceive them and then start interviewing people. After a choice had been made as far as the search committee is concerned, then that choice will be presented to the entire board of trustees. In almost every instance, the board of trustees is the electing body.

That’s partially a very real, major part of their responsibility as trustees of the college, is to select someone to act on their behalf to do the administration responsibilities of the college on behalf of the trustees. In a real sense, the trustees own the college or at least they are responsible for seeing that its purposes are carried out, that the policies that they have set are carried out.

CAUDILL: So you could say, that the board of trustees, that the president is answerable to them.

ESLINGER: Right, absolutely and in most instances, the president does not have tenure. I don’t know if you are familiar with the word “tenure” but this is a term that is very popular in educational circles. Professors after a certain numbers of years are given tenure. It is very difficult then, other than for malfeasance, misfeasance or just disrespectful, unrespectful conduct, for them to be removed from their position. Most presidents don’t have that pleasure. They serve at the will and pleasure of the board of trustees. As long as they do their job in the eyes of the trustees, they usually are retained. But, I will have to say that the tenure of college presidents, in general, has not been very long. The average all over the country probably is less than seven years.

CAUDILL: Then it is a pretty gregarious position?

ESLINGER: Yes, that’s right. [Laughs] Burn your self out pretty fast.

CAUDILL: Now, since you had the trial of being President sixteen years, what would you say are the most admirable qualities that a president should have?

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ESLINGER: He, well, of course, this will depend to some extent on the type of institution that he is serving. If he is in a public institution, then his qualifications would be different from those needed for a private institution. If it is a wealthy institution, again, his qualifications would probably be somewhat different but for a college such as Lees, which is a small, two year, independent, church related college, he certainly needs the ability to raise money, to meet with the public effectively, to speak with some degree of respectability and persuasiveness. He needs to be able to work with people both on campus and off campus. He needs to have some management abilities because it is just as important to conserve resources as it is to develop new resources.

CAUDILL: So you have to be sort of a jack-of-all trades then?

ESLLINGER: [Laughs] You could say that. It helps if you are.

CAUDILL: What has been so far your greatest problem at Lees? Has it been raising financial aid and so forth?

ESLINGER: I doubt that I could truthfully say that that has been the most important or most difficult problem. That is always a difficulty because there are so many institutions and so many organizations and agencies that are approaching the public for contributions all of the time. So it is difficult to raise the money that is necessary in the case here at Lees College. The student fees pay far less than half of the cost of keeping a student in college so those monies have to be raised elsewhere. That is difficult. At Lees College, I guess, the complexity of the situation could be said to be the single most serious problem that we’ve had. We live in a community and yet we need to have our own identity as a college community so there is always that problem of relating effectively with the local community. We have an awful lot, I think, to offer to students but it

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 9 takes unceasing effort to communicate that to prospective students who could benefit from their experience here. I don’t think I am just biased in saying that I really believe that we have, that we have put together a staff, a teaching staff, and a program, an academic program that would be very, very hard to exceed anywhere. I just feel that we have got so much to offer the students that are here by way of finding themselves, by way of developing leadership characteristics on their own but the big problem is in communicating this to those people who would benefit by it. It is an unceasing responsibility.

CAUDILL: So you are always developing new ways to reach people.

ESLINGER: Right.

CAUDILL: Do you think that you have been successful in doing this, as much as you would like to do it?

ESLINGER: Obviously, I haven’t been as successful as I would like to be. There are always shortfalls. We have never been able to get everything done that we would have liked to do, but on the whole, I would say that there is plenty of evidence that we have succeeded in a lot of instances. We have improved the facilities and our graduates have gone out to take good positions. They have become leaders in a very real sense in the community. I think that we can look with a great deal of pride on what our graduates, what our product has been.

CAUDILL: A very high percentage of Lees graduates go on to other schools.

ESLINGER: A very high percent, yes. This probably will change with the number of two-year programs that we have out. I think there will be a lot of job opportunities for our graduates in mining technology and electronics and the media program. I will be surprised if there aren’t some good jobs for them and they move right into them.

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CAUDILL: I feel that was a good innovation, those programs, because they are specialized and there will always be a job in electronics. If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have come to school. That is what I was interested in. What are some more things besides the various programs that you have put in that you have used to help boost the college enrollment besides those programs?

ESLINGER: Well, I guess you would have to identify such special programs as Upward Bound and Special Services as being directed toward improving the chances of students doing work when they get here. A lot of students from this area, Kentucky, well true not just of this area, true all over the county, I guess, that a lot of students graduate from high school without really knowing what they want to be, without having any career in mind specifically and again, without having done all that they should have done in their own personal development, academically and otherwise. We have a couple of programs, one known as Upward Bound which brings high school seniors and juniors onto the campus for five weeks, five or six weeks in the summer. Give them an introduction to what life on a college campus might conceivably be and then encourage them to enroll in college when they graduate from high school. This has been a good program.

The Special Services program is one designed to help students who have some deficiencies in reading or writing or arithmetic.

CAUDILL: Do you feel that high schools and grade schools should do more to help students to prepare if they want to go to college or vocational school or whatever?

ESLINGER: I feel very definitely that the high schools and grade schools, lack of that, are failing to succeed in challenging students. Now, I don’t, in making that statement, therefore, place blame necessarily on those schools. There may be instances where a teacher, individual

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 11 teachers, are guilty of turning would-be students off, but it is just a whole collection of problems that have developed. Parents haven’t encouraged their children to learn in many instances. They haven’t provided wholesome reading materials at home. They haven’t had what I would call stimulating conversation around the table which might tend to promote a desire on part of the child to learn more, to hit the books more, really to develop his own personal possibility, potential. It is a collection of all of those things that contribute to it but certainly it is true that a large number of students graduating from high schools today are very deficient. They have deficiencies in reading ability, in reasoning logically and in the area of motivation, the desire to achieve.

CAUDILL: The end results of education is something to be avoided.

ESLINGER: That’s right.

CAUDILL: What programs do you think could be implemented to change this? Is there room for change or is it too great a problem to be solved?

ESLINGER: I don’t really think that I have got a definitive answer to that question but there certainly are some things that can be done that have been demonstrated in selective schools across the country. One area of getting people involved is, for example, drama. I have known of some schools where because there were one or two really effective drama teachers, they got maybe half of the student body involved in little short plays, the development of programs which tends to give the student a sense of poise and a sense of self-confidence. So many of our students, especially in the mountains, I’ve observed, lack self-confidence. They seem to think that they are born to lose. We have got quite a number of them here at Lees who, so far as their

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 12 own attitude about themselves is concerned, they just don’t really expect much by way of performance.

CAUDILL: What are the some of the problems that are peculiar to children, say, in eastern

Kentucky that maybe different from kids in other parts of the country?

ESLINGER: Well, I don’t know if there are really any new problems that exist here. I grew up, as I said earlier, in Georgia and a lot of the things that I was aware of there, I see being repeated here. They are not all that new or different but there are obviously some problems within especially the lower stratum of the social structure, out in the rural sections. I think it is pretty apparent that diet has been a problem. They have not had wholesome food. The school lunch program has done a lot to offset that but I am told by people who ought to know, whether they do or not, I don’t know, but they are supposed experts in the field of nutrition and human development. They say that the diet of a child, the very first few years, determines the rate of development of the brain to a very large extent. Especially if diets are deficient in protein, they can hold down the development of the brain, mental ability of the child, and when that is done over a period of three or four or five years, there may be permanent damage so that the possibility of really full development has gone rather poor. But to the extent that undernourishment exists, that is a real problem or that bad diet exists, I am told and I have observed it personally, to some extent, that an inordinate number of children out in the communities, especially the lower income families, eat far too many sweets and drink far too much pop for their own health and failing to develop from the standpoint of a healthy body and in time, have its impact on their mental development as well.

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CAUDILL: What do you think would be a good way to solve this problem? Would it be educating the parents on proper nutrition?

ESLINGER: A lot of effort has been made by various groups, none of which have succeeded very much. Now our ALCOR program here at Lees College has had as one of its thrusts, nutritional training programs in the summer in the little center that we operate, working with the parents and their lives, and, of course, the school system has had a health education program all along. It is received in varying degrees of receptiveness, I am sure, but those are things that have been tried and to some extent, has had an impact. The county health program has been interested and it could certainly be expanded if funds were available, but I guess really, it comes down to educating the children so that at least when they grow up to be adults and have children of their own, they will have a better chance, a better shot at it. I think education while it is not the cure- all for all of our problems; it certainly has the potential for easing the burden of most of our problems.

CAUDILL: Would you say the economic situation in the mountains has caused a lot of the problems about education?

ESLINGER: Oh, of course. In years gone by, the model that most young people had of a person going on to higher education was that he would become a teacher or she would become a teacher. The model of the teacher then was paramount up until ten or fifteen years ago. That has changed a great deal. The mining operator or even the laborer in the mine…

CAUDILL: Coal truck driver.

ESLINGER: And the coal truck driver, is in a position of envy, I guess, from the standpoint of income. The economics of the area certainly are undergoing change and who is to say what the

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 14 future is going to be. The new highways have made it a lot easier for the people to get in and out and as a result of that, we have had more people go out than perhaps come in although that condition is beginning to change. In time, as people have more money to spend for things that are of value, if through education and through the social agencies including the church, people can be made to see what is important in life, then the area may be altogether different in another generation.

CAUDILL: Exposure to outside influences I can see where education has changed.

ESLINGER: I think the real pioneers in this area have been the educators, those people who have seen the importance of education and sacrificed their own lives and own energies in order to bring it about. I take my hat off to whether elementary, secondary or college level.

CAUDILL: A lot of the schools around here for years were the only places to go to get a higher education, Hazel Green Academy, Lees and so forth.

ESLINGER: Right.

CAUDILL: By the time a child goes through, you know, without a proper diet and doesn’t have exposure to the value of education, he’s not exposed to what education should be, by the time he reaches college, he’s an intellectual mess so you can see where program such as Special Services and stuff would be valuable.

ESLINGER: Absolutely.

CAUDILL: What is Lees’ plan for the future?

ESLINGER: Well, we spend a great deal of time in planning efforts. We anticipate remaining a two-year institution and we think that the career programs that we have now, half dozen or so, will be effective in meeting manpower needs in the area and in providing handles for job

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 15 opportunities for those students involved in those programs. But, along with the career programs, we anticipate maintaining a very strong emphasis on general liberal arts, foundational type of courses. We think that a student needs to know more than just how to make a living. He needs to know what it is that makes a good living. That is, he needs to have a sense of values that will sustain him if adversity is encountered, if he runs into bad luck or if he has an accident. He needs to be able to redirect his life more easily than he would perhaps otherwise be capable and a very strong argument can be made for intensifying the liberal arts foundation as we see the cohesiveness of different aspects of lives, recreational aspect of work ethic, our esthetics, our relationship to God and to eternity, all of these things need to be emphasized, I think, as a part of any skills training that we give.

CAUDILL: So Lees is combining the practical with an education?

ESLINGER: Right.

CAUDILL: Was this a hard decision to make in putting these programs like mining considering that this is a liberal arts institute?

ESLINGER: Well, actually no, since we were fortunate to have some special funding to make it possible. The fact is that Lees has always been sensitive to changing needs. This institution was founded in 1883 as an Academy because there wasn’t a formal organized school in the community. Then, it became a collegiate institute which meant that in addition to the elementary and high school courses, they provided some, what was called “normal” programs which is another word for teacher education. Had a lot of the, for example, Eastern Kentucky University, started out as a “normal” school. Morehead was a “normal” school. These were teacher schools so Lees started out because that was the need. We became a junior college in 1927. The biggest

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 16 need that existed was for elementary teachers so the college was able to bring young men and women here for two years and give them introductory courses in education and then they would teach in the winter time and come back to school in the summer time until they got a degree here or got the two years and then they would transfer to Eastern or Morehead. So, what I am saying is, the college has always been sensitive to needs. At that time, the biggest need was for teachers and when the teacher market was supplied, we began to turn to other things that needed to be more needful. In today’s society, it would seem that in additional to broad liberal arts type courses, we need some skills training so we simply moved into that and we did it by virtue or conducting some surveys into the kinds of specific skills that were needed. While we may not have found all of them and some of the ones that we’ve selected may in time prove to be no longer needed, at least the ones that we have now seem to be very viable.

CAUDILL: So this move has been carefully selected?

ESLINGER: Very carefully planned and we are planning all of the time for future development to make sure that we are able to provide for the needs of the area as we discern them.

CAUDILL: Would you say now that since over the years these various schools have turned out so many teachers that there is now a surplus of teachers in the community or in eastern

Kentucky?

ESLINGER: Well, all over the country there are more teachers graduating from teacher educational universities than could possibly be absorbed into the public school system right now.

But, this will pass. A lot of people have changed their minds. They are not nearly as many enrolled in teacher preparation courses now than was true a few years ago. So, the need will be

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 17 met and a lot of the teachers now in the classroom will reach retirement age so new ones will be needed.

CAUDILL: Sooner or later.

ESLINGER: Sooner or later the cycle will be completed.

CAUDILL: Does Lees plan to put in any specific programs later on in later years like mining and electronics?

ESLINGER: Other types of programs but similar to that. Well, we don’t see any in the immediate future with the exception of the possibility of a fast food management training program. We are exploring that very carefully right now and if all of the requirements are met, we may, in deed, start that program in the fall on an experimental basis and we will continue to be alert to identify the needs on the part of specific careers and it may be that some that we have got now, will need to be phased out. I don’t know. They may or may not all continue to be needed. If any one of them reaches the point of just not reaching students and getting students in them, then obviously it is no longer needed, we will take that out and introduce something else that is needed. But, we are committed to this kind of effort, at least for the time being and for the foreseeable future, mainly the basic liberal arts foundation but augmented by a sufficient number of specific career programs that a student will be able to move into the job market after two years if he wants to. But as in the case of electronics and even mining and most of the others that we have got now, there is a transfer potential even in these career programs so if a student gets real excited with some field and wants to get a Baccalaureate degree, an Engineering degree, he can just transfer most of the credit onto the senior institution. There would be some credits that would not be transferable. For the most part, they would be transferable.

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CAUDILL: Morehead, I think, has some programs that you can transfer to.

ESLINGER: Yes.

CAUDILL: When you work out a program like this, do you consult other schools or say with

Morehead, would you talk to them?

ESLINGER: Well, we at least try to discover what other institutions are doing and in each of these specific careers, we have also brought on advisory committees made up of people in the business, or in academia in other institutions. The case of the electronics, we have got eight or ten people who serve in an advisory capacity. We have got the regional managers of the General

Telephone Company in Hazard and South Central Bell in Winchester serving on that committee.

We have got a couple of people who are in business. One is in television and radio repair.

Another is in the sale, distribution and repair of radio/television. We have got a retired man who spent most of his life working with the Bell system serving on this committee. They advise us as far as course content and the overall direction of that particular program so that we don’t go into it just lightly. We try to explore the market, whether there are job opportunities in that field, whether there are needs for people trained in this line and, of course, we have to because we are an accredited college. We have to make sure that what we are providing is going to be acceptable to the accrediting regency.

CAUDILL: How is that done? How does a school become accredited?

ESLINGER: Well, we, this is a regional agency made up in our case of all of the states within the Southeast and all of the colleges, universities, both public and private, seek to be members of that because it is the accrediting body by which we can say to students and to the public what we are offering is up to the standard that we say it is. It meets with the accreditation requirements of

AOHP_Eslinger_674.1 Page, 19 this body so we have to insure that our program there was acceptable. Now, every ten years, we have to go through a very intensive self-study and we make a report of that to the accrediting body and then they relate to us throughout that interim period, to make sure by way of annual reports, we are doing what we said we were proposing to do and that our students are, indeed, being accepted to senior institutions as we said before.

CAUDILL: So nothing is undertaken at the spur of the moment.

ESLINGER: Well, I wouldn’t say nothing but again, almost all that we do that is of any significance, any major change, goes through a very long process. The Board has to approve and the faculty and the staff have to work it out to make sure that it is going to be feasible.

CAUDILL: Generally, how long does it take for programs such as or electronics how long does it take?

ESLINGER: Oh, it will usually take two or three years to get all of the details worked out before we can get into it especially if we are going to have to develop separate funding for it.

CAUDILL: To get it into the classroom.

ESLINGER: Yes, that’s right.

CAUDILL: Well, Dr. Eslinger, I thank you for talking to me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

[End of Interview]

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