Alice Turley is a retired teacher who has lived in the Bourbon County area for most of her life. I got to sit down with her and hear some stories about her and her growing up. She was named after two of her grandmothers along with her mother. She grew up with three siblings. One brother and two sisters. They lived near her pepaw, because he had built them a house. Growing up, Alice was a small girl. “I remember when I first started in school and I had to get on the bus, the bus driver offered to come down and lift me on the bus because he thought I was too short to climb on the bus.” She went to school in North MiddleTown for five years. 

When Alice was in fifth grade, her mom and dad divorced so she moved away to Clark County. This is where she finished her time in high school. After she graduated, she lived on a farm with her family. “I learned how to do all kinds of farming work. Like, tobacco, and cattle, we also raised pigs.” She went to college at Eastern to get a teaching degree. She stayed there for four years. This was the only time she didn’t live in Clark or Bourbon county. “Before I graduated, my husband and I met. We actually met at North Middletown’s prom. Junior/senior prom, and he had just returned from his senior trip. I had gone with another friend that also used to go to North Middletown. We met there and we danced once, and then a year later he called and asked me for a date. He’s kind of slow like that. But we hit it off right away and he went into the Army, and I went to college. He would come home every weekend and pick me up at Eastern, and we would spend the weekend with his parents or my parents. He would then take me back to Eastern on Sunday night. That was our life for a while, even after we got married. We got married in June of 1966 and I still had one more year of college left, he still had more Army left.”

In March of the next year, Alice bought them a trailer home they had parked at a trailer park in Bourbon County. They lived there for five years. “That’s where we lived when our son was born. Kevin was born on December 15, 1970. I was teaching at Clintonville. I took a year off from teaching and stayed with Kevin for a year and then when I went back to school the next year his mom was his babysitter. She also kept some other children. She loved taking care of children.” When Alice first started teaching at Clintonville, they only had one car. So they borrowed a car from her husband, Doug’s, brother. It didn’t have any heat, and it didn’t have a muffler. So, in the winter she would drive with gloves and hats on.

After living in the trailer for five years, they decided to build a house on the farm in Clark County where his parents lived. They gave them five acres of land. “That is where Kevin started school, back in North Middletown where I went to school. I began teaching there at North Middletown after I transferred from Clintonville. The house was a brick ranch style home with hardwood floors. I really liked it. I really liked living out in the country. We had a little garden.”

The thing I noticed about Alice’s house was the wall hangings, lighthouses, and bells that were decorated around the house. She started collecting bells when she was a teacher. Her mom helped her come up with the idea of collecting them, and she gave her some to start off with. In the summer, she always traveled. She would get bells from as many different places as she could. This also sparked an interest in lighthouses, since she is no longer a teacher. She also started making quilts with some friends. She has since made tons of beautiful quilts and wall hangings. Her house is decorated with all of these things. Shelves with lighthouses, bookcases with bells, and wall hangings everywhere. Alice asked me to add that she also has had the opportunity to raise her two grandchildren, and she’s blessed to have that opportunity.