The Poignant Provenance of My First Year of College

By the time I graduated from high school in 1962, my folks had been making payments on a small farm only a decade. After Dad was discharged from US Army Air Force, he searched a few years for a farm to buy.

But the counselor at Earlham High School determined during my freshman year that I should aim for college. But graduation was coming up and the problem of how to pay for it.

Joy Neal, 1962 Earlham Grad

When Grandma Leora heard about the dilemma, she decided to cash some bonds, enough to give $1000 to each of her four adult children. The money she gave Mom paid for my freshman year at the State College of Iowa.

I didn’t realize it then but that Grandma had bought those bonds with insurance money she received after the loss of Dale, Danny, and Junior. Those brothers helped me get started in college. I am so humbled by this.

I was the first my immediate family to get to attend college. The summer after my freshman year, I began working at the old college library. My sophomore year was challenging because, even with a small scholarship and the job, I still couldn’t make ends meet. The college’s brand new Donald O. Rod Library found three jobs for me there, and I applied for a National Defense Student Loan. By working in the library each summer, one of them full-time, I graduated in 1966 with a loan to pay off.

But Grandma’s gift was just one of the legacies she blessed with, especially knowing the provenance of this one.