Mark Pumphrey:  

After high school, I attended Somerset Community College and worked part-time at Citizens Bank. After two years at SCC, I transferred to UK's main campus in Lexington. Living alone at college and being on my own for the first time was somewhat overwhelming for me, but I managed to graduate in 1975. In my junior year, I joined a group of students from a variety of colleges for a semester in Geneva, Switzerland, studying the United Nations system and other international organizations. I could never decide what to major in and wound up with a general studies degree that was not marketable. I spent one year at a theological seminary before realizing I was not suited for the ministry and dropping out. I moved back to Lexington and looked for a job, finally finding one at the University of Kentucky Libraries. I just worked for two years as a library paraprofessional, with very little income and no transportation. At times I wondered if that was it for me. But then in my third year at the UK Libraries, I took advantage of a university policy allowing workers to attend graduate school classes on the job. Since I worked at the university library, I took classes in Library Science. Eventually, I decided to complete the requirements for a master's degree in library science. I had flirted with majoring in English three times during college but always switched to something else. So I had nine graduate hours of English that transferred into the library science program, allowing me to finish the MLS program in just a year and a half. For some reason, after getting my MLS degree, I wanted to move back home, and with the help of the public library director in Somerset, Judy Burdine, and the SCC library director, Jim Miller, I was chosen to be the Oakwood librarian for residents and staff in 1979. I lived at home and then in a mobile home on a lot I purchased across the road from my parents' house. It took me a long time to break away from my parents and be independent. After three years at Oakwood, I decided to transfer to the Department of Corrections and took a job in La Grange, KY as a prison library director. I stayed in this position for three years, also, living with my oldest brother's family in Shelby County at first, as I'd done while at the seminary in Louisville, and later on my own, renting an apartment in La Grange. During this time period, I became a member of the American Library Association and started attending its national conference. Through the ALA Placement Service, I interviewed for an Institutional Library Consultant's job at the South Dakota State Library in Pierre and got it. I worked there for two years, and then took a similar position at the South Carolina State Library in Columbia in 1987. My father died of cancer the same week I interviewed for the job in South Carolina. I worked at the SC State Library for five years, and through ALA developed an interest in literacy and services to the disadvantaged and physically or mentally challenged. In 1987 I also took a giant leap by leaving the Southern Baptist denomination in which I was raised and becoming a Unitarian Universalist. My political views have also become more and more liberal over time, even though the Pumphreys were always Democrats living in a mostly Republican county. My parents both had lived growing up in the Northern part of Pulaski County near Eubank and Woodstock, off of Highway 70. I spent many summer days and Saturdays at my father's dairy farm and playing with my cousins Junior and Marie Pumphrey (Smallwood).. I was actually born in a little town in Northern Kentucky near Lexington, Carlisle, that I have fond memories of and where my father held his first job as a high school agriculture teacher. He and my mother started out as farmers, and my father was only able to go to college because he was eligible for the GI bill after serving in the armed services in France. When I was nearly nine, my family moved back to Pulaski County, where my father got the job as an agriculture teacher at Pulaski County High School. This was ideal for him because he could develop the family farm on Buck Creek at night and on weekends while hiring a tenant to maintain the farm day-to-day. My father built several houses and farm buildings during his lifetime, including the two houses I grew up in, in Carlisle and Somerset. After having lived in Columbia, SC for a year I met my future life companion at a Unitarian retreat in Highlands, NC. We dated long distance for a year, since he lived in Asheville, NC, and had a daughter in high school at the time with who he spent every weekend. After a false start in 1988, we reconnected in 1991 and we've been together ever since. Jean-Claude is French and grew up near Strasbourg in Alsace, bordering the Rhine River and Germany. His mother was German and the family spoke Alsatian, a German dialect, as well as French, in the home. Jean-Claude's father's heritage was Italian, so the last name is Linossi, though his father lived in Alsace his entire life. Jean-Claude and I have visited France and other parts of Europe many times since 1991. We may retire there, though the pull of family is strong, since Jean-Claude's daughter Marie has two daughters herself, Sophie Marie and Miranda, with her husband Brian, and Jean-Claude may want to eventually live in North Carolina again to be near his daughter and her family, who live in Apex, NC, near Raleigh. Brian and Marie both work at SAS, recently named the best company to work for in America. After living for a year in Asheville, we moved to the country, near Pisgah Forest in Transylvania County, NC. We lived about five mile...Expand for more