Mountain Legacy: A Story of Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School with Emphasis on the Junior College Years

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"Go one day by railroad, one day by horse and buggy, a third on horseback, a day on foot, and then on all fours until you climb a tree. And when you fall out, you'll be in Rabun County." In Mountain Legacy, these are the directions that guide the reader to the formerly isolated, poverty-stricken valley of the Appalachian Highlands of north Georgia, where, one hundred years ago, a man founded an 1800-acre farm school, and students could get an education by combining poetry with plowing, mathematics with milking, and psychology with sorghum syrup making. Part One of this nonfiction book , with bibliographical references and index, tells the story of Andrew Ritchie's struggles to get an education, himself, and then to return to the valley to build Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, despite almost insurmountable odds. Part Two addresses a unique time period in the school's history, the junior college years of the Great depression and World War II, and the personal stories of those students, who later became advisers to presidents, educators, scientists, physicians, mathematicians in the early space program, and heroes of the Bataan Death March and the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo. Part Three shows the changes after WWII, the Foxfire years, and the visions for the future of a unique school, where dreams of an education and the escape from poverty can still come true.