Day 7

I’m well aware that there are truly great people roaming amongst us - but in the past two days I have had the rare opportunity to come face to face with two who also happen to share an alma mater with me. This morning, while en route to Louisville, Amy and I made a pit stop to visit with Galen Martin, ’51 in Jeffersontown, KY. Martin, an avid athlete who ran the New York Marathon at age 62, and spent most of his winters skiing in Aspen, was involved in a tragic bicycle accident two and a half years ago that left him immobile, and with severe brain damage. Although he came from a segregated, rural town in West Virginia, the young, white student leader became passionate about justice and race relations while at Berea, and later became the first Executive Director of the Kentucky Human Rights Commission. He went on to spend most of his life advocating for justice and equal rights. He founded the KY Fair Housing Council and served as an attorney in the landmark 1975 school desegregation lawsuit in Jefferson County, Kentucky.

The second person I came face to face with (via his black and white photograph) was a young African-American man from Bracken County who became the first black athlete at Berea. I learned about William Humphrey through Men’s Basketball Coach, John Mills who brought his African American Alumni Athletes exhibit to share with alumni in the Shelbyville-Louisville area during our second alumni/friends “Relay Roadstop” at the Claudia Sanders Dinner House. Humphrey later went on to become the first principal of the John G. Fee School in Brooksville, KY. Earlier this year Coach John Mills shared Humphrey’s story with a prospective Berea student and basketball recruit from Bracken County who had multiple college acceptance letters before him. It is amazing that over a century later, Humphrey still managed to inspire another young African American man from his own hometown - the prospective student recently decided that there is no place he’d rather attend college than Berea.

Individuals who make movement and who inspire are all around us, but it is an indescribable feeling to know that such individuals once walked the same hallways and sidewalks that I did. It is an indescribable feeling to know that I belong to the same family and share the same legacy as Galen Martin and William Humphrey.

Signing off from Shelbyville, KY,
Mae