Photo by Crystal Wylie ’05
Maurice Godsey ’60 remembers the coal dust. “Coal was the thing that from the time you woke up till you went to bed, you heard it, you smelled it and you breathed it,” he recalled from his home in Ohio. “I have asthma now. It probably came from that.”
Growing up in Defiance, Kentucky, a coal camp named after developers from Defiance, Ohio, Maurice lived in a world where educational opportunity seemed as narrow as the hollers that carved through Perry County. His family had been in eastern Kentucky since the 1790s, subsistence farmers turned coal-camp entrepreneurs. His father ran a country store, bath house and barber shop, serving the dirty miners who emerged from the earth each day.
But in 1956, something unprecedented happened. Maurice’s older brother Garland became the first in the family to actually finish high school, and then he attended Berea. Garland went on to become a dentist and president of the Kentucky Dental Association.
“Garland was the first college graduate on either side of our family, Godseys or Combs. And you just wonder what was in our background that instilled us with that desire to learn.
Maurice Godsey ’60
“Garland was the first college graduate on either side of our family, Godseys or Combs,” Maurice said. “And you just wonder what was in our background that instilled us with that desire to learn.”
About the time Garland graduated, young Maurice missed the deadline to apply to Berea, was wait-listed and enrolled at Cumberland College in Williamsburg. In the summers, he worked at a Buick dealership in Hazard, near home, cleaning cars and driving a wrecker. Having not heard back from Berea, Maurice settled into his path and was happy, except for one thing. The prettiest girl he ever saw, Christine Reedy ’60, was going to school in Berea.
They had met on a hayride, where teen romance is traditionally assured. Later, that meant Maurice was spending a fair amount of time in Berea as well, hitchhiking from Williamsburg to Berea to visit. He’d stay with high school friends, who lived in Howard Hall.
One summer day, back in Hazard, the dealership alerted him to a man who needed a tow. The man was Rolf Hovey, founder of the Berea College Chapel Choir and director of the music program. Godsey explained to the music instructor that he had applied to Berea but didn’t get in.
“Can you sing bass?” Hovey asked him. It turned out he could, and Hovey made sure Maurice was admitted for the next school year.
At Berea, Maurice was officially reunited with Christine. He chose social studies education while Christine studied English and Latin. She worked in the Boone Tavern gift shop while Maurice took a position at the campus fire department. So long as a fire didn’t break out, and aside from the rigorous training, it was a cushy gig that came with little supervision and a room to himself.
Along with his new path came an introduction to the wide world. “I met a pluralistic society there,” he said of Berea. “Growing up in an eastern Kentucky coal camp, you’re limited to your surroundings and the people you deal with. But Berea was multicultural. We had people from all over the world. That broadened my horizons more than anything.”
Upon graduation, Maurice and Christine married and moved to Ohio. They explained to school administrators looking to hire that they came as a set. Hire one, you have to hire the other. And that’s what happened. Maurice and Christine Godsey began a 40-year teaching career in and around Cincinnati, where they raised their children, Amy and Mark.
Mark Godsey, now professor of law at the University of Cincinnati and director of the Ohio Innocence Project, described a childhood within an “intellectual house,” where discussions of politics, current events and rigorous academic pursuits were the norm. He credits Christine with instilling in him the skills necessary to become a lawyer.
“My mom learned to write because of Berea,” he said. “She became an English teacher. She drilled me with writing from a young age, taught me how to be an excellent writer. I pass that on to others now as a law professor.”
Amy Alexander, now a retired educator as well, still trains teachers to work with gifted children. She related that while other families were going to Disney World, the Godseys bought fancy clothes and stayed at Boone Tavern.
“Berea was like Mecca for us,” she said, “this magical, beautiful place where we got to walk around all the shops and see everything, go hiking. We’ve always spoken of Berea so reverently.”
She related, also, that Berea’s influence had made their family unusual in their area.
“We used to joke all the time that we had the hippie parents,” she said. “They were peaceniks, multicultural. We went on fishing trips with African American families. We had Russian friends, friends from all over. In the 1970s, those things made us different. We felt so lucky that we didn’t have parents who raised us to see people as different because of the color of their skin or their backgrounds.”
Amy and Mark carry the Berea values their parents instilled in them as their own lives progress. Mark has reached a certain level of fame through the Ohio Innocence Project. The former prosecutor has worked to free 43 wrongfully convicted individuals from prison. His book, “Blind Injustice,” even inspired an opera of the same title. His success in this realm has led him to be a regular convocation speaker at his parents’ alma mater.
“A few years ago, my dad came down,” Mark said. “Mom had already passed. On the door to the dorm where she lived, where he would sneak over at night to visit, there was a big poster of me speaking. This is where they met all the time, this same door.”
At 87, Maurice still writes letters of recommendation for promising students who are a good fit for Berea College, with one of them in attendance this school year.
