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In the hollers of West Virginia during the Depression, hardly anybody dreamed big. Earl Stamper, didn't anyhow. When he went to a two-room schoolhouse in Elk Creek, it didn't matter noways if he passed on to the next grad. He'd still be with the same kids and the same teacher.

"I never did care if I get promoted one year to the next," Stamper remembers now. "I always figure I was going to be a coal miner in that area. I didn't need Algebra for that."

He's been out of the hill country for more than 50 years, but the language of mountain folks, with its rhythm and twangs, stays with him still. The way he says "figger" and "turrible" and places an "h" at the beginning of "it" places him in Mansfield, Ohio's transplanted Appalachian community.

Stamper's parents never nagged him about paying attention in school. Neither finished grammar school themselves. But his father wished just the same that Stamper wouldn't make a life in the mines, working low coal on his hands and knees.

"The old man said he'd take a shovel and beat me if I went inside (the mines)," Stamper said. "Then I did, later on. When I got too big to whip."

When he was 14 and still in the fourth grade, Stamper quit school. Before he'd worked long, the whole family left the coal fields and went to Toledo to work in the war factories.

"Sold everything we had. Gave away the rest," Stamper said. And when he turned 18, he was drafted into World War II.
The army didn't care how learned he was, as long as he could march and shoot.

"I could read a newspaper," Stamper said. "I could figure math some, just enough to get by on. They didn't care if you could write your name, more or less."

After the war, the factories in Toledo shut down. But the Stampers had kinfolk in Mansfield, Ohio, a small industrial city halfway between Cleveland and Columbus. In those booming years, good jobs were easy to get for men with strong backs. Stamper went to the Empire Steel Mill.

"Worked just long enough to throw my shovel down and go to Hades," Stamper said. Shoveling slag into a furnace was a job for someone with fewer advantages than he had.

Although Stamper has participated in the literacy program at the Mansfield/Richland County Public Library, he prickles at the suggestion that he was ever illiterate.

"I used to drive a truck before you was born," he said. "You can't do that without knowing to read. Give me an address, I can find it anywhere in the world."

Stamper met a 17-year-old sweetheart from Olive Hill, Kentucky, through her cousin. They married and made a home in the Little Kentucky neighborhood, which combines rural culture on city-sized lots just outside of town.

"After I stayed awhile, I was wanting to go back (to West Virginia), "Stamper said. "Them hill are in your blood."

He can't bear to go back to his school reunions.

"Everybody meets, they come out of the hollers. It get to me a little too much. Every little thing comes back to me. Some good, some bad," he said soberly.

He raised two daughters, practically built his own home out in the country on 12 acres, and when his granddaughter got into trouble and couldn't keep her daughters, they took them in too.
"It ain't the way I planned," Stamper said. "Someone else was going to raise them. We weren't going to have that."

So, the 4-year-old and 7-year old girls, whom Stamper describes has "like two old beagle pups" were added to the family in his old age. At 72, he's working nights as a watchman at a factory in town 40 hours a week.

And, after more than 50 years out of school, Stamper decided to get his GED.

"I had other things to do with my time when I was younger," he said. "I've always known I was short. I'd tried to do stuff on my own. I couldn't hardly divide four into 12."

He found a tutor through the literacy program at the library, and they began exploring Algebra and writing essays together.
"A lot of people helped me- a lot of people. And I appreciate every second of it, too.

There are so many people like me that want it and don't know how to get it. Need to be pushed in the first step or so. It's very important. Doggone very important."

His sister's grandson's wife wants to study for her GED, and Stamper is going to help her. "She got three little young'uns. They live in a trailer," he said. "It's pretty hard on her." His tutor told him " 'Five and X makes 12.'"

"I said, 'Really!' That got so interesting to me," Stamper said. "I learned a little bit about Algebra. That ain't enough for me. 1.03 1.036. Dividing it out. I just love to do it."

"My worst penalty would be to be locked up in here for a year, not be able to read anything. The more I get, the more I want it."
Getting his GED won't change his salary.

"A lot of guys ask 'Do you want a better job? At your age? Doggone, Earl.'" I don't want no better job. I want to know how to divide 750,000 into 2,000,000."

Stamper took the GED, and failed by .8 of a point. He said when he passes, he'll be bragging to everyone.

"You're going to hear like a sonic boom. It'll be me," he said. "I'll go out in the parking lot, so I won't jar the paint off the walls.'
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Postscript: Earl Stamper passed the GED on the second try.