Pine Mountain Settlement School
Series 09: BIOGRAPHY – Staff
Series 22: ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
Ben Begley: Naturalist, Teacher, EE Director 1986-2014
Benjamin Clay Begley (1952-2018)
Patricia A. Begley, EE Staff 1989-2014

---

TAGS: Ben Begley, teachers, students, Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School, zoology, botany, naturalists, ecologists, storytellers, environment education, Afton Garrison, Mary Rogers, Burton Rogers, Patricia Begley, workshops, Reading Camps, Appalachian stories, Appalachian music, awards, Kentucky Natural Lands Trust, Hugh Archer, Marc Evans

---

BEN BEGLEY Staff

Naturalist, Teacher, Director (Environmental Education) 1986-2014

When Ben Begley came to the Pine Mountain Settlement School in March 1986 as the director of the Environmental Education program, he envisioned a short five-year stint before moving on. However, his stay lasted twenty-eight years, teaching day camp students and visiting school students about the natural world, using the School’s 800 acres, home to many rare plants and animals, as a laboratory.

BEN BEGLEY: Before Pine Mountain

Born in 1952, Benjamin (Ben) Clay Begley spent much of his youth in Kingsport, Tennessee, exploring the outdoors with his three brothers and his Boy Scout troop. After high school graduation, he served in the U.S. Air Force for four years before attending East Tennessee State University (ETSU) on the G.I. Bill. His keen interest in the natural sciences led to a degree in zoology, then a graduate degree in botany, also from ETSU.

BEN BEGLEY Staff: At Pine Mountain

In the meantime, the Pine Mountain Settlement School had established an Environmental Education program in 1972. When Ben was hired by the School in 1986 to teach environmental science, he found that the program was in decline due to administration upheaval in the late 1970s and early 1980s. According to the October 2008 issue of Notes from the Pine Mountain Settlement School,

 Ben’s first challenge was to revive the program. He turned for help to naturalist Afton Garrison of Essie, Kentucky, and Mary Rogers, a self-taught naturalist and wife of retired Pine Mountain director Burton Rogers. Together they improved existing classes and created new ones. They recruited schools to come for multi-day visits. Their efforts resulted in more than 3,000 students annually attending classes at Pine Mountain.

Each year for nearly seven months, Ben and his staff (which included his wife Patricia “Pat” A. Begley who began teaching at PMSS in 1989) conducted classes for school groups. During the rest of the year, Ben lead two spring wildflower weekends, a fall color weekend, and the four-day forest study workshop “In the Footsteps of Lucy Braun.” He assisted with the School’s day camps for local children and the week-long summer Reading Camp for third and fourth graders, often enhancing his talks with Appalachian stories and music.

Other Projects and Recognition

Ben’s dedication to his profession and the School was not only evident in his teaching but also in the many projects he had undertaken, including the following: drafting the groundwater stream head protection plan for Pine Mountain’s reservoir; in 1999, supporting efforts by groups to save the top of Black Mountain from a proposed mountaintop removal mining operation; and working with others on a petition in 2000 to declare 2,500 acres close to the School as unsuitable for mining, a dispute with a coal company that eventually ended when the state declared the area off-limits to mining.

 

According to the October 2008 Notes, Ben has been a longtime member of the Kentucky Society of Natural History (KSNH) and served as its president for two years. In 1992, he was designated by KSNH as “Naturalist of the Year,” as reported in the Winter 1993 issue of Kentucky Naturalist News: 

BEN BEGLEY
KSNH NATURALIST OF THE YEAR

It is with great pleasure that we announce that the Kentucky Society of Natural History’s 1992 Kentucky Naturalist of the Year Award was presented to Ben Begley of Pine Mountain Settlement School.

 Ben, a United States Air Force veteran, attended East Tennessee State University where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Zoology and his Master’s Degree in Botany. It has been said that Ben entered college with the intention of studying birds but later changed his focus to wildflowers because he didn’t have to chase wildflowers! If this is true, Ben certainly did not lose his interest in birding and is quite an expert birder. He also maintains an interest in all aspects of natural history.

Ben served as a park state naturalist at Warrior State Park in Kingsport, Tennessee, and has been the Environmental Education Director at Pine Mountain Settlement School for six years.

Pine Mountain Settlement School hosts approximately 6,000 students each year to visit the School and to participate in the environmental education program. Ben and his wife Pat, who is also an educator at Pine Mountain, serve as outstanding role models not only for our youth but to all who are fortunate enough to visit Pine Mountain Settlement School.

Once again we congratulate Ben and thank him for his dedication.

Ben also received a Schuller Spirit of AMERC Award for 2008-2009 from the Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center, whose students make annual winter visits to Pine Mountain.

Also reported in the October 2008 Notes:

In recent years, Ben has [worked] with Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission (KSNPC) and Kentucky Natural Lands Trust, which is working to preserve special natural areas on Pine Mountain” in partnership with the School. The article quotes Ben as saying, “I…never tire of spending time in the forest with my colleagues: Hugh Archer, Tom Barnes, Marc Evans, Kyle Napier, and Wally Roberts. We are always learning from each other.

In the Notes article, Marc Evans, now retired senior ecologist for KSNPC and former member of Pine Mountain Settlement Board of Trustees, summed up Ben’s many attributes, all of which have greatly deepened an appreciation of the School’s natural surroundings and their preservation in all who know him:

Ben is an outstanding naturalist and biologist, a pre-eminent environmental educator, a strong conservationist, and a talented and creative storyteller and artist, not to mention a wonderful, warm-hearted person.

On December 12, 2013, Kentucky State Nature Preservation Committee bestowed its highest honor, the 2013 Biological Diversity Protection Award, to Ben and Pat Begley. The award was given in recognition of their 28-year tenure teaching environmental science to more than 75,000 students at Pine Mountain Settlement School.

**********

In 2014 Ben and his wife Pat retired to their new home in New Mexico. In 2018 Ben passed away in New Mexico and a year later Pat returned to the Appalachians.

---

The following is a short video of an update that Ben gave on his work with the Environmental Education program at Pine Mountain Settlement.

VIDEO [in process]

---

GALLERY: Ben Begley

---