. . . The average citizen in the United States, if he thinks about Appalachia at all this summer, thinks that the problems are being handled—that there is no reason for him to be particularly concerned. —Thomas S. Gish, editor of the Whitesburg, KY,Mountain Eagle, in a speech delivered beforethe Council of the Southern Mountains on July 14, 1964 Born in Floyd County, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Milton Ogle graduated from Berea College in 1955. Following a short tenure as a math teacher in McDowell County, North Carolina, Ogle returned to Berea to administer the college’s broom factory. He enjoyed his job, which allowed him to interact with people from all over the region. It helped him, moreover, appreciate the role that Berea College played in the Southern mountains. “Berea was really good,” he recalled in 1991, “at . . . taking in people that had been by-passed by the non-system of education that existed then in Appalachia and helping them to get over the hurdles .
