Hard Work, Determination, and a Community of Support

The Donald Eugene Harsh & Valena White Harsh Endowed Workship Fund was established by Cumberlands’ alumna, Valena White Harsh, to provide for students with financial needs and a willingness to work as they earn an education.

Valena White Harsh, ’70, grew up in Letcher County—in the heart of Kentucky’s coal-mining industry, the daughter of a coal miner and one of ten children. Harsh saw education as her way to leave the rural Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky and pursue teaching as a career. At her pastor's invitation to travel with his family, she arrived in Williamsburg, where she encountered the encouragement of Dr. James Boswell. She entered Cumberland College as an eager student in the fall of 1967.

Life was not always easy when she was growing up. Having an ardent desire and a higher calling, Harsh wants to help other first-generation students like herself, who are motivated to get their degrees and do well through hard work and determination.

Harsh had no money for education, nor did her parents. In addition to her work-study position on campus, she worked at the local Holiday Inn to pay for personal and college expenses. She recalls, with humility and much emotion, that Professor John Broome once traveled to her hometown to attend the funeral of her 3-year-old sister. Upon his return to campus, he helped collect a love offering to pay final tuition expenses so she could receive her diploma. Self-motivation drove her, and she completed her education at Cumberland College with honors within three years. She credits Education Director Dr. James Davis with connecting her to her first teaching job at Ockerman Junior High School in Boone County School System while still completing her student teaching.

She knows God blessed her with a good career, life, and enough finances to pay the bills, plus savings to someday pay it forward to other students at her Alma Mater. She also knows that Cumberland College made all the difference in her life and wants to give back to make the same opportunities possible for others from humble financial beginnings as Cumberlands once afforded her. Eventually, moving with her husband to Florida, she continued her chosen career and retired after 42 years as an educator.

Harsh now lives in Florida, and Donald maintains a home on a family farm in Ohio. She leaves a legacy that will provide for students who will walk the same pathway as she—a path to a life of promise and true meaning.