When Alvin returned from the war, he wanted to help his community and the people around him.
"But I knowed, though, that I had done changed. I knowed I wasn't like I used to be. The big outside world I had been in and the things I had fought through had teched me up inside a most powerful lot. The old life I had lived seemed a long, long way behind me. It seemed to be a sort of other life in another world. I knowed I had changed. I was sort of restless and full of dreams and wanting to be doing something; and I didn't understand. So I sat out on the hillside trying to puzzle it out." - York |
"Before the war I had never been out of the mountains. I had never wanted to be. I had sorter figured that them-there mountains were our shield against the iniquities of the outside world. They sorter isolated us and kept us together so that we might grow up pure-blooded and resourceful and God-loving and God-fearing people. They done done that, too, but they done more'n that. They done kept out many of the good and worthwhile things like good roads, schools, libraries, up-to-date homes, and modern farming methods. But I never thought of these things before going to war. Only when I got back home again and got to kinder thinking and dreaming, I sorter realized hit." - York |
Due to Alvin's lack of schooling, he spent most of his later life trying to help Tennessee mountain children like himself, get a better education.
Alvin York could see that education was a great need of mountain people. He himself had a poor education, so Alvin started his planning of the Alvin C. York Foundation, which helped him raise money to build a school for the Fentress County boys and girls. Through the foundation, Alvin began on a series of lecture tours that raised $12,000 in contributions and $25,000 in pledges.
Recognizing that "Christian principles are the foundation of our government, Alvin proposed that the school be " strictly Christian" while teaching the Bible and encouraging faith and prayer.
The school was built, then it was turned over to the State Board of Education which would operate the school.
Recognizing that "Christian principles are the foundation of our government, Alvin proposed that the school be " strictly Christian" while teaching the Bible and encouraging faith and prayer.
The school was built, then it was turned over to the State Board of Education which would operate the school.
Tom Skeyhill traveled to Pall Mall to convince Alvin to write a book about his life.
When Tom Skeyhill arrived in Pall Mall, he found Alvin York teaching Sunday School.
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"I had often speculated as to what my first impression of him would be after this lapse of years. I had pictured him, of course, as a hunter, a woodsman, a dead shot, a preacher on the mountainside, but somehow I never had thought of him in the role of a guide to children. He seemed too big, too strong, too severe, too much of the fighter and the killer to fit such a role. Yet, here he was in the midst of them, smiling and quiet-voiced, with a radiance in his eyes. The eyes of the children were on him. They followed his every movement. Around the little school he went, bending low over each little boy or girl and whispering in their ears a passage from the morning lesson, after which he called on them to read the passage aloud. When they faltered he smiled and helped them out." - Skeyhill 1927 |
“Now Skeyhill revived the idea, urging York to collaborate with him on an ‘autobiography.’ The sergeant refused, suggesting that Skeyhill write his own book, but the latter insisted on York’s participation. He told York he had a patriotic duty to share his story with the American people who had honored him so richly. Moreover, the publicity would greatly benefit his still-struggling school. York pondered the matter again and a week later took the diary from his bank strongbox and placed it at Skeyhill’s disposal. ‘Jes tell the truth,’ Skeyhill quoted York as saying, ‘the whole truth, and let it go at that.’” – Lee
"Then I begun what I felt was my life work. I went to the State Highway Department and asked them to build a road through the mountains. And they done done it. They built what we now call the York Highway right across our county. Then the other counties done noticed it and built roads on either end. And to-day we have a right-smart road running through this-here mountain country. And there were only mountain trails and old dirt roads that were no good nohow and creek beds here before. That was the beginning." - York