A Legacy of Service

BY TINA V. BRYSON

With the picturesque lake at Camp AJ behind her and a cool breeze offering respite from the oppressive heat, Joyce Marks reminisced about what drew her husband and their family to Eastern Kentucky.

It was 1964, and her husband, Melvin, was a student at the University of Kentucky. He read about a job in the church bulletin and made plans to interview with Rev. Ralph W. Beiting, who had just formalized Christian Appalachian Project (CAP) a few months before.

“He didn’t even tell me about it, but that was okay. That was his style,” she said with a smile. They were expecting their first child, whose due date was nearing. Melvin accepted the job, and they moved to Jackson County.

Melvin’s degree was in agriculture, but he soon expanded his knowledge and used his expertise to encourage Beiting to purchase a sawmill to provide jobs in the area. His pay was $50 per week, and he was provided a house with running water.

“It was common that he might have one job one day and another job another,” Marks recalled. “He was made a supervisor, and since he had a degree in agriculture and grew up on a farm, he was put over the tobacco, about five acres.”

CAP purchased a dairy farm in 1963 and also grew tobacco. George Purcell and Melvin were among CAP’s first paid employees. They worked together to make these projects successful in the creation of jobs in Jackson County, which was economically depressed.

After forming Cliffview Lodge to serve children in Jackson County, Beiting realized that the parents in the area also needed assistance. They wanted jobs “to earn their own living so that they didn’t have to be on welfare,” said Beiting in an interview with the University of Kentucky Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History in 1992.

“One of the things that I felt was essential was that we should utilize the resources of the area in the creation of jobs,” Beiting said. “The poorest of the four counties that I had was Jackson County and so my concentration went there.”

He talked to the Trappist Monks of Gethsemani, who had a farm. When Beiting asked if they could help, they gave him some pigs and connected him to the Sisters of Nazareth, who gave him some cows. About six months after Purcell began, Melvin reached out. He was put in charge of CAP’s timber operation too. They cut down old trees to sell and turned that land into pastureland for the cows. That operation expanded and eventually became a sawmill, which Beiting not only sold to Melvin but financed as well. Every year, they met on the same day as Melvin’s first interview, and he would pay the next installment on the purchase of the logging operation.

“We were living in a camp house at Grayhawk, and [Beiting] let us keep on living there,” Marks said. She and Melvin eventually had nine children in 10 years and stayed at CAP for about nine years.

One day, someone donated a bulldozer to CAP. Beiting accepted the gift and it was used to clear land for a number of early projects at CAP, including work on the lake at Camp AJ. Melvin helped clear the land for Camp AJ with a group of volunteers who were college students.

“That is really how he got his start. And by the grace of God, we made it,” added Marks, who, in addition to raising nine children, kept the books for the sawmill, did the billing, and performed other administrative duties for the logging operation. “We stayed in Jackson County, and he employed people here because people really needed jobs. There were really poor people, and he worked with them.”

Marks now runs the Jackson County Food Bank, which provides food for 400 families each month. She has more than 30 grandchildren, and her family helps at the pantry as well as at Camp AJ.

“Camp AJ is a very wonderful place,” Marks said. “Some of my children worked here in the summertime. And that that was very eye opening for them. One of my kids said, ‘Oh, we thought we were poor. I didn’t know what poor was.’ It was a very good experience for them. It let them see poverty and also put a good work ethic in them. We were glad to be a part of a place where Appalachian children could come.”