A nonprofit publication of the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism

Kentucky by Heart: Vision, determination of a girl named Bruce brought college to Cynthiana


By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist

Years back when Johnny Cash sang about a “boy named Sue,” he might just as well have done the same about a “girl named Bruce.”

But where Johnny, at the end, expressed frustrated regret for the gender anomaly, Bruce Florence, the Cynthiana woman whose strong leadership brought a college to her town, relishes her masculine sounding name. That’s because her father insisted on calling her Bruce, naming her in tribute of his respected uncle, who helped raise him.

But she also has used her name for the good of her community. While writing letters to get accepted into boardrooms to drum up support for starting the Licking Valley Campus of the Maysville Community College, she typically signed her name: K. Bruce Florence. “That sounds like a man,” she said, laughing. “And I got an appointment. Otherwise, I might not have.”

Bruce started her quest in 1996 while still teaching English and communications classes at Cynthiana’s Harrison County High School. You might say she was following in the footsteps of her father, a lawyer and judge in the eastern Kentucky town of Harlan.

“Daddy worked tirelessly to establish a community college in Harlan,” she said. “Politics got into it and the site ended up going to Cumberland, in Harlan County. But it was (still) a good thing.”

Bruce Florence in front of Licking Valley Campus (Photo Provided)

His proactive efforts left a positive mark on her, for sure.

“I’d always wanted to live in a college town,” she said, “but I ended up falling in love with a Cynthiana boy and moved there.”

The town, at that time, had no college, but her husband, an electrical contractor, later proved quite helpful in Bruce’s efforts to plant one there. Bruce’s simmering desire to help her community in this way gained traction as she watched students in her high school reach a dead end after graduation.

“Through the years, it bothered me when I could see young people who were not going to be able to go (on) to school,” she said. Then one day in 1996, Bruce received an interesting request from a representative from Maysville Community, asking if she’d be interested in teaching a college class in Cynthiana. Not surprisingly, Bruce, along with a young lawyer in town, accepted and began the small step of offering local individuals a convenient way to further their education.

It was a positive movement, but also not an optimal arrangement for those involved, according to Bruce.

“I realized that this wasn’t fair to the teacher or students,” she said. “You registered the first night at class and you might buy a book out of the trunk of a car.”

With that, she asked school officials if she might actually work as a representative for them and help create more classes. The answer, she noted, was a firm no, citing financial reasons. Undaunted, Bruce approached the school again, this time with the offer to work free and setting out a detailed plan for carrying out her services.

Among other things, she would create class roster paperwork, plus find a place for students to buy books and also a location for paying their fees and tuition. The new offer was accepted, and Bruce threw herself headlong, or, as she likes to say, “plunged” into her volunteer duties, with the endearing hope that it would be a step toward a broader, more genuine college experience placed in Cynthiana-—including a dedicated building for that purpose.

“I did that for about a year and a half,” she said, “and it started growing like topsy, a dozen classes. We had to get faculty people from Maysville to come and help with registration.”

At that point, the officials saw the clear upward trajectory spawned and decided to pay Bruce, she explained, as “the facilitator.” Until that point still teaching high school classes, she decided to step down and go full-time with her focus on establishing the college.

“People in the community were starting to see this wasn’t such a bad idea after all,” Bruce noted, and people were coming to attend classes from places outside such as Nicholas and Bourbon Counties. Previous obstacles to receiving a college education, such as being tied down to family responsibilities, often farm-related, or financial realities, began to be overcome.

By now, said Bruce, “There was a lot of low-hanging fruit…lots of people (interested). At the time, the school in Maysville was called a community college, not yet a technical college. We weren’t even a ‘branch.’ We were called a ‘site.’”

Grinning, she recalled having few resources to carry out the duties of her new responsibilities.

“I was running the program from the corner of my husband’s desk and the back end of my car. I didn’t have a space for students to come and register.”

Additionally, she had to scrape for materials to use for simply communicating to those involved.

Fortunately, help from the community came as the word got out.

“A lawyer in town found me a basement to use free,” she explained. “The Rotary Club paid for our phone bill for three months, and 3M gave us some used furniture.”

Bruce and her helpers started with a typewriter, but soon someone gave them a computer with useful software, and another gave a Xerox copier and kept it repaired, “like manna from heaven,” she said. “We could send all kinds of letters, do syllabi and other things.”

People like Alice Allen, Cynthiana, an early student in the program, were extremely helpful in doing the leg work. Money started coming in as Bruce appeared on local radio, spoke at service clubs, wrote letters to churches, and contributed articles about the endeavor in the town newspaper, the Cynthiana Democrat.

The hard work, led by Bruce, brought steady growth in the number of students, money was flowing to the project, and they were now in a position to rent an open upstairs office area in nearby Oddville, where they had previously used the basement.

“By 2004, we went to 400 students, then to 600,” said Bruce. “It was obvious we were going to have to have a building.”

Alice Allen, buoyed by the positive influence from Bruce while she attended classes and dealt with personal obstacles, echoed Bruce’s idealism.

“I wanted us to dream for the big things.” For Alice, she aimed to follow a true leader, calling Bruce “so wise and compassionate…a powerful lady. When she talks, people listen.”

But Maysville Community College, though appreciative of the Cynthiana student growth, prioritized a new science building for their campus. School officials made it clear that they weren’t in a position to help finance the Harrison County location.

That’s when a couple of Kentucky state legislators stepped in to support the effort after they watched a presentation led by Bruce. State Senator Denny Nunnelly, Versailles, and state Representative Tom McKee, Cynthiana, listened with great interest to Bruce and her “little team” of Lori Gaunce and Sandy Power.

“We drew up plans for what we wanted in a building,” she said. Using the slick paper from 3M, a screen from a church and projector from the high school, plus brochures made with the Xerox machine, the legislators were duly impressed by her team.

“They (Nunnley and McKee) took it up to Governor Patton and gave us enough money to build the building,” said Bruce.

McKee grinned when he recalled the presentation to Governor Patton.

“I still remember the ‘black folder’ that Bruce and her group prepared for Patton,” he said. “He (Patton) bought into it and was able to put into the budget $2.5 million. It was the right place, the right thing, and the right time. I want to make one thing clear, though. The Licking Valley Campus of the Maysville Community College would not be there without Bruce Florence.”

And though there initially was not enough funding to include facilities for a needed nursing program, the no-frills but very practical building next to Harrison County High School now sat, according to Bruce, “like a beacon on the hill. With that visibility, the fight was over.”

She heaped praise on the main architect for the project, one who had to deal with a “witch at the head of this…me,” she said, grinning. “We weren’t going to have anything fancy. Every room was to be used three or four ways. The poor architect would draw, then have to take things out.”

The completion of a building spurred a dramatic increase in enrollment, at one point reaching a thousand. Helping was the fact that Bruce led in adding special accents to the Licking Valley experience.

“There were no old traditions to lean on,” she noted. “We could make our own traditions and we had a ‘wide open policy.’”

To make it inviting to parents and their children, there were toys and a fish tank inside the building, along with lollipops for the kids. Bruce also made it clear that a student could “call anytime and we could meet anytime.” Meeting the whole person and their needs obviously guided Bruce.

Steve Flairty grew up feeling good about Kentucky. He recalls childhood day trips (and sometimes overnight ones) orchestrated by his father, with the take-off points being in Campbell County. The people and places he encountered then help define his passion about the state now. After teaching 28 years, Steve spends much of his time today writing and reading about the state, and still enjoys doing those one dayers (and sometimes overnighters). “Kentucky by Heart” shares part and parcel of his joy. A little history, much contemporary life, intriguing places, personal experiences, special people, book reviews, quotes, and even a little humor will, hopefully, help readers connect with their own “inner Kentucky.”

Today, the Licking Valley Campus of the Maysville Community and Technical College is a vibrant part of Cynthiana’s local economy and culture and gives a strong sense of possibility to those who strive to improve their life situations. The LVC building has expanded to allow for a viable nursing program, one which works closely with the nearby Harrison Memorial Hospital, a truly synergizing collaboration.

Sheila Currans, CEO at HMC, praised Bruce’s work on the hospital’s board of directors, for her part in facilitating the supply of registered nurses, through the local college, for HMH.

“Bruce obviously was the person who understood, because of her role on the board, how important it is for nurses to be available in rural communities,” she said. “It started with the LPN program at Licking Valley, beneficial, but in acute care hospitals, the need for RNs is the more staggering problem. This hospital is obviously the beneficiary.”

Sue Lake is a Cynthiana attorney who formerly served as a teacher at Harrison County High School. She, like Bruce, also taught classes at the fledgling Licking Valley school and saw the magic that her friend performed in establishing the college.

“She pioneered the idea that a woman could be the head of such an institution,” said Lake. “I admire her for having gotten the building there on that site, and for her variety of talents it took to do so.”

But according to Bruce Florence, her success was merely “a collaborative effort through the generosity of the people of this community who helped me make it happen,” she noted.

Looking ahead, she’d like to see “the personnel who work at this school be devoted to the mission of educational opportunity for anyone in this area who wants it, and for the best teachers to be found for them. And, we need an endowment fund, one that comes from this community.”

Without question, those noble pronouncements are the kinds of things you’d expect to hear from Cynthiana’s own girl named Bruce, a true treasure whose work there will not be forgotten.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

steve-flairty

Steve Flairty is a teacher, public speaker and an author of six books: a biography of Kentucky Afield host Tim Farmer and five in the Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes series, including a kids’ version. Steve’s “Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes #4,” was released in 2015. Steve is a senior correspondent for Kentucky Monthly, a weekly NKyTribune columnist and a member of the Kentucky Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Read his KyForward and NKyTribune columns for excerpts from all his books. Contact him at sflairty2001@yahoo.com or visit his Facebook page, “Kentucky in Common: Word Sketches in Tribute.” (Steve’s photo by Connie McDonald)


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One Comment

  1. Angie Mimms says:

    Bruce is such an inspiration! Thank you for this story!

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