The photo presented shows Dr. Kenneth Yount and his wife Carol in Antarctica, one of the many places around the world that Yount has visited.
Philippi – Dr. Kenneth H. Yount has lived in the Philippi community for over 50 years and can still be seen frequently as he goes about his daily activities there. However, very few people he meets can imagine the places he has been, the people he has seen, or the things he has achieved.
Yount explored every corner of the Earth, on all seven continents. He traveled to all 50 US states and all Canadian provinces; throughout Mexico; One of the states of Australia, the islands of New Zealand and the forests of northeastern India, and northern Thailand, much of Africa and South America.
He has already visited the frozen deserts of the Arctic Ocean in the north and Antarctica in the south, and made 15 trips to Europe over 500 days and more than half of the 50 countries there.
During these visits, he spoke to a crowd of over 100,000 people in India (also broadcast live on Indian television); The main Sunday morning sermon, in Spanish, was delivered at the largest Protestant church in the Bolivian city of over a million people; was named “great poet” After winning a poetry competition held among 189 expeditionary expeditions from Antarctica; met the British Prime Minister while studying at Oxford; He attended an audience with two different popes and was invited to the personal home of the President of the United States and spent an hour in face-to-face conversations with the President about American government and politics.
But at the end of his journey, Yount always returns to Philippi, where he and his wife Carol have three daughters (Katherine Mullens, a lawyer, Sarah Ferguson, an artist and teacher, and Mary Beth McCloy, a minister, teacher and author). Took care ) with 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Yount, who was a National Merit Scholar, attended six colleges and universities, graduating with honors. He worked for the United States government near the Capitol in Washington, DC and edited two separate dailies. He then came to Philippi and became a professor at Alderson Broaddus University, where he served for five years as dean and vice president for academic affairs. His fellow dean in the five-state region elected him president of the Appalachian College dean.
He loved teaching and loved his students, and he returned the favor, eight times named him Distinguished Professor at the University of Philippi, including the fact that he won college. “Outstanding Teacher of the Year” Awarded in 2012, with a prize of $2,000, and nominated by students five times as their nominees for the Statewide Outstanding Teacher of the Year with Faculty Merit Program. In this prestigious competition, he was a four-time state finalist and in 2013, he was named state runner-up with a $2,500 prize. He was also honored on the floor of the West Virginia legislature for his contribution to education in the state.
Just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Yount and his wife were exploring South America for the third time among giant stone heads on Ecuador, Chile, the Galapagos Islands and Easter Island. The pandemic slowed his journey, but Yount made good use of the blocked time to write eight more books (in addition to the four he had previously published). Two of the new ones are out of press, three more are ready for publication, and three more are in various stages of completion. Yount also writes a diary which he has kept for 60 years.
While in Philippi, he served as president of the Philippi Kiwanis Club and helped raise thousands of dollars that were donated to youth organizations and activities. In addition to serving as a moderator for the Greater Union Baptist Association, he has served as president of the mission school, and chairman of the enrollment committee at the Philippi Baptist Church. He was a Barbour County representative on the Regional VII Planning and Development Board and the educational advisory committees of Philip Barbour High School and Barbour County.
Of all the great places he’s ever been, when asked about the best place to live and raise a family, his answer is always the same – West Virginia.
