Scholarships Honor Family, Support Students

Martha Dee Rausch attended Transylvania University for one year in the 1960s before transferring to and graduating from the University of Kentucky. Though her stay at the school was short, she appreciates her connection to Transylvania and has followed its progress with interest.

Last year, she established the Martha Dee Rausch Endowed Scholarship Fund in honor of Grover Cleveland Cox and Delina Center Cox, her paternal grandparents. An additional provision for this purpose has been included as a bequest in her estate plan.

A native of Richmond, Kentucky, Dee is now retired from her position as senior associate registrar at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and lives in South Carolina with her husband, Lowell. Both greatly value education and spent their careers in higher education administration.

Dee recognized the impact that her grandparents had on her life and wanted to honor them with a scholarship to support students with financial need who came from the Kentucky communities where Dee's family lived—specifically, Madison, Estill and Garrard counties.

"My grandparents passed along a strong work ethic that reached through the generations to me," Dee says. "This scholarship allows me to honor them in a way that will last for a very long time."

Both grandparents were born in Irvine, which is in Estill County. A few years after they married, they bought and managed a general store in Manse, near Paint Lick, which is in Garrard County. The original Dee, short for Delina, was an integral part of the day-to-day operation of the store while tending to three active children. She was also a prolific reader and increased her knowledge well beyond her years of formal schooling.

In the early 1930s, Grover and Dee moved to Richmond, in Madison County, and lived there the rest of their lives. In 1940, G.C. Cox & Sons was formed as a family partnership and was the beginning of a very diverse business that included a gasoline and oil distributorship, a bulk gasoline storage plant, and leased gasoline stations and other rental properties. Grover served a term as mayor of Richmond. He was also an elder in the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and an active member of the Rotary Club.

For more information about scholarships or bequests, please contact Diana McKenzie at (859) 233-8801 or legacygiving@transy.edu.