"What is an education? I don't know how you get it. I think when you're educated, you're able to view things realistically and see yourself as part of a community and that community as part of the world. There's something inside you that propels you." Gaynell Begley, in "American Dreams, Lost and Found" by Studs Terkel

Joe and Gaynell Begley - traditional merchants, active participants in grassroots change, parents and grandparents - have also been staunch supporters of quality education for Eastern Kentucky children.

One of their dearest wishes for the store's second life as a museum and cultural center is that it serve as an educational resource for local schools. To that end, the store has begun partnering with the county school system and nearby schools to offer teacher workshops, conduct oral history projects, and bring children into the store to experience for a moment a bygone way of life.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the store served as a headquarters for organizing against strip mining and the debilitating "broad form deed," which allowed coal companies that owned mineral rights to mine private lands without permission of the owners. School groups are encouraged to visit the store to learn about the old ways and catch the spirit of activism that is evident from the political signs to the crinkled copy of an old broad form deed Joe Begley once took with him to Washington when he spoke out against strip mining.