Family Credits Teamwork and Work Ethic for Success

Parents Make College Education for their Children a Priority

By Haven Miller

Certain words come to mind when listing the values personified by students, faculty, and alumni of our UK College of Agriculture family — hard work, honesty, teamwork, perseverance.

These same words describe another family, the Koch family (pronounced “Cook”) of Bourbon County. Honesty and hard work are the central theme, and indeed the foundation, of a family story that began in central Kentucky more than three decades ago.

“I was a young single girl, and my sisters and I decided one Sunday afternoon to drive out to Stoner Creek Farm to visit a young man one of us knew named Gus Koch,” recalled Theresa Koch. “Gus was busy tending to a sick stallion named Count Fleet, and the last thing he needed was five girls showing up all a-twitter wanting to see his horses.”
Evidently, Gus Koch found time for both his work and the five sisters — particularly one of them. It was the first time he and Theresa had ever met, and three months later they were engaged. Five months later they were married.

Now, over 31 years later, Gus and Theresa live on the famous Claiborne Farm where Gus is assistant manager in charge of breeding stock. The couple has ten children: Charles, 31; Jennifer, 30; Becky, 28; Stephen, 26; Matthew, 24; Anthony, 21; Amy, 19; Cecilia, 18; Gus, 15; and Mary Regina, 12. Four of the children (Charles, Becky, Stephen, and Matthew) are graduates of the University of Kentucky. Two, Stephen and Matthew, are UK College of Agriculture alums, and Anthony is a senior finishing up his degree in agricultural economics at UK. Cecilia will enter the UK College of Agriculture this fall. All of them know the meaning of hard work.

“We don’t tolerate slackers,” said Gus. He and Theresa have always made sure each youngster carries his or her own weight. Part of their upbringing was, and still is, doing chores on their own farm in Bourbon County, and also at Claiborne Farm where they did everything from mucking stalls to weed-eating. Some of the boys also worked part-time at the local Southern States Co-op store. The girls worked in town at the hospital, pharmacy, and courthouse, or at the Claiborne office as a receptionist.

Gus credits his parents and the Marine Corps for instilling in him the values he has passed along to his children. “I had very good parents who did a good job of raising their family.”

Theresa’s parents also had strong convictions. “We were expected to either go to college or get a job, and if you got a job you were expected to contribute part of your earnings to the household finances,” said Theresa. “I worked as a long-distance operator for General Telephone, then worked in the Care-By Parent unit of the UK Medical Center, and then later as a secretary for a real estate office.”

Anthony spending some time with alumni at Roundup.

After Gus and Theresa married, Gus continued on at Stoner Creek Stud for a while, then accepted a job offer from E.P. Taylor to work on Taylor’s Windfields Farm in Canada. Five years later the couple moved to Maryland to work on another one of Taylor’s farms. That’s where one of Gus’s charges was the famed racehorse and sire Northern Dancer. A year later the couple was back in Kentucky, working for the Hancock family at the renowned Claiborne Farm.
“It was the year of the contagious equine metritis scare and Gus had come down from Maryland to see what our farm was doing to control the disease,” said Claiborne owner Seth Hancock. “I had it in my mind to hire somebody to run the stallion and brood mare division, and I was pretty impressed with Gus. I’m big on first impressions, and I thought he looked you in the eye when he talked to you. He also had a good, firm handshake and asked sensible questions. I also knew Gus’s dad, so I knew he came from good stock, and that’s important whether you’re breeding horses or hiring people.”

That was 24 years ago, and the famous farm that has nurtured the growth of some of the world’s best equine athletes — Secretariat, Nijinsky, Seeking the Gold, Danzig, to name a few — has also nurtured the growth of an outstanding Kentucky family whose members embody the spirit of cooperation and teamwork.

“Since we’re such a big family, everybody had to learn to get along with one another, and everybody had to pull his or her own weight,” said oldest son Charles, a UK history grad who is employed at Claiborne. “Everyone had responsibilities, and if you said you were going to do something, you had to do it.”

Although the pull-your-own-weight philosophy may have seemed a little tough at times to the Koch children, they acknowledge that the lessons learned in youth are now paying off in adult life.

“Now that I’m a mother myself, I see the value of what my parents were teaching us,” said Becky (Koch) Mitchell, second oldest daughter and UK nursing school graduate.

“When we worked at the farm we learned that horses have to eat and it didn’t matter what day of the week it was — they didn’t get a day off and neither did we,” said Anthony, who’s a senior in the College of Agriculture.
“Those Koch boys worked their tails off for us,” said Seth Hancock proudly. “That’s why I knew they were all going to make it because when they were working here at Claiborne the other employees would grin and say, ‘Don’t put those guys working beside us — they make us look bad!’”

Anthony said growing up at Claiborne Farm was a great experience, but he really didn’t think about it in terms of living at a world-famous place until later years after he got to college and some friends said, “Wow, you live there!”
For anyone who knows the Kochs, it’s not surprising that all the children are either college graduates, in college, or college-bound. Education has always been a cornerstone of Koch family life, and the children were encouraged to excel in elementary and high school. Through the years the children also pursued a variety of school activities ranging from band to FFA.

“FFA is one of the best organizations at our local high school. It has played a big role within our family,” said Gus. “In addition to Anthony being a state FFA officer and Matthew a regional president, there were also a number of projects the boys did, including a nurse mare business where they would lease draft horses to Claiborne as nurse mares. This also taught them about business.”

Several Koch children play musical instruments and participated in band in both high school and college. Nine Koch children were in the high school band, and three played with the UK band.

One of Gus and Theresa’s highest priorities has been to ensure a college education for all 10 children. Some parents might have flinched at the thought of such a daunting financial challenge, but the Kochs have met the challenge with creativity, strict guidelines, and help from the Bourbon County Boys and Girls Funds.

“Any student in Bourbon County is eligible to apply for college funding, and it’s a unique, highly effective program that has been very generous to this family,” said Gus. “The money is provided by private donors in the county. Students have to keep their grades up, and they also go through an application and interview process to determine how much they will receive. There’s also another scholarship for the dependents of horse farm workers that’s been extremely helpful to us.”

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Koch Method of Putting 10 Children through College
• Instill a work ethic in your child
• Pursue local scholarships
• Make a contract with your child
• Help pay 50% if child keeps grades up
• Child lives on campus
• Expect child to work part-time

The Koch sons pose behind their father, Gus, in this late 1990s photo. From left: Gus, Matthew, Charles, Stephen, and Anthony

Since we’re such a big family, everybody had to learn to get along with one another, and everybody had to pull
his or her own weight.–Charles Koch

Gus and Theresa Koch address the crowd at the 2001 Scholarship Banquet.

Stephen and Matthew are UK College of Agriculture alums, and Anthony is a senior finishing up his degree in agricultural economics at UK. Cecilia will enter the UK College of Agriculture this fall. All of them know the meaning of hard work.

Gus with son Anthony at Anthony’s workplace, Southern States in Paris.

Because scholarships alone were not enough, the Kochs worked out an innovative arrangement that involved part-time jobs, parental assistance, and a written agreement.

“We wrote out a contract for every child, starting with Charles,” said Theresa. “We figured up what their tuition, board, books and major expenses were going to be. We deducted their scholarship money, then went 50-50 with them. But the deal was that they had to keep their grades up and keep a job, or else they had to foot the whole bill themselves.”

“Some of them toward the end of college have had to borrow a little money, but they’ve all gotten out pretty much debt-free when they graduated,” said Gus. “And they worked by gosh, they learned a work ethic, and that’s what we wanted.”

Even though home was just 30 minutes away, the Koch collegians all lived on or near campus. Gus and Theresa believe living on campus is part of the university experience, and feel one of the great things about UK is that it’s just far enough away to “sever the cord,” but close enough so that Mom and Dad know what’s going on. They also believe that the College of Agriculture offers an extremely positive environment in which to learn.

“All colleges promise personal attention and guidance, but the UK College of Agriculture delivers,” said Gus. “For example, after an uninspired start, Stephen later enrolled in Dr. Loys Mather’s Food and Agricultural Marketing Principles class and suddenly became challenged and energized. His GPA soared and his ambitions came into focus. And Dr. Steve Vickner’s demands for excellence really inspired him, and today Stephen is an associate sales director at Keeneland. And I could go on — Dr. Lori Garkovich and Dr. Randy Weckman and Susan Skees and others all helped prepare our son Matthew in various ways to meet his career goals, and today he’s an officer in the United States Marine Corps. And Anthony, who’s at UK now, has valued the intelligence of Dr. Lee Maynard, who taught him grains and marketing and futures, and who inspired Anthony to win a national position with the student section of the American Association of Ag Economists.”

Gus said the best advertisement for a successful business — or college — is a satisfied customer, and that Stephen, Matthew and Anthony fit the category.
“At the urging of these three older brothers, our daughter Cecilia will start at the College of Agriculture next fall, and our son Gus, who’s a high school freshman, has already expressed interest in the Ag College when he’s old enough to apply,” said Gus.

Gus agreed that in many ways the College of Agriculture promotes the American values cherished by not just the Kochs but by many Kentucky families, and that in these challenging times for the nation it’s more important than ever for higher education to instill in young people a sense of honor and purpose.
“Theresa and I have taught our children to be true to their faith, to be upright, and to be good citizens, and the College of Agriculture reinforces those values,” said Gus. “We consider ourselves a farming family, and everybody who knows farming understands there are good times and also times when things are tough, and it’s our values that see us through when the going gets tough.

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