Joseph E. Maley '50

Joseph Maley ’50 grew up in Frostburg, but even though Frostburg State Teachers College was right in his backyard, nothing in his background or his schooling made him think that college was for him. “I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do. I never thought I would go to college,” he said. Maley is the youngest of his siblings; none of them went to college, nor had anyone in his family before them. He worked in a couple of local industries after high school, then was drafted into the U.S. Navy and served in World War II. After leaving the service, the then-new GI Bill made him think differently about his future. “It was because the college was here that I went,” he said. “It was just a little college then, only about 150 students.”
With the help of the GI Bill for his last two years, he earned an education degree from the “little college,” and went on to earn a master’s degree from Columbia Teachers College (now part of Columbia University) in New York. Maley returned to Maryland and started working as an elementary school teacher in Frederick, and later in Harford County. It wasn’t long before he was made a principal, a post he held for 22 years. “It was a good living. As my mother used to say, I knew where my next meal was coming from.”
A few years after retiring from the school system, Maley returned home to Frostburg to be nearer to family. He had long been wanting to make a gift to his alma mater, and a newspaper story about a scholarship established at FSU in the name of an old friend, Constance Spates, encouraged him to explore the issue further. Maley established the Joseph E. Maley Endowed Scholarship Fund in support of junior or senior education majors, with a preference to those from Allegany County, providing the same opportunity for a new generation that he had years before. “The college gave me the opportunity to make progress in my life. I’m grateful,” he said.