Arnold Taylor

This scholarship is offered in honor of Arnold G. Taylor.

Born in 1921, Arnold Taylor worked on a Henderson County farm through the Great Depression and was conscripted to farm service through World War II. He came to Western Kentucky State College to study agriculture in 1948, where he met Sara Downing, whom he would marry in 1954. Arnold finished his agriculture degree at the University of Kentucky but remained connected to Western the rest of his life. His wife invested her career at Western teaching early childhood education, and both of his children, Greg and Susan, were WKU graduates, as well.A man of many skills and interests, Arnold also worked as an engineer with Whirlpool Corporation, an Earth Science teacher at Bowling Green High School, and founder of Arnold Taylor Tax Service, where he enjoyed helping clients until retiring at age 81. He was an avid gardener through his 90th summer. Arnold had a deep respect for nature’s strategies and provision, trusting how soil, seed, water, sun, animals, and farmers worked together to grow a crop. “I don’t grow tomatoes,” he would say. “I just plant them, and nature does the rest.”

In honor of his life and perspective, this scholarship is designed to be awarded to an agriculture major at WKU who intends to work on a small-scale, diversified farm, with a preference for organic/ regenerative/ agro-ecological farm production.The donations for this scholarship came from friends and family in his honor at his death in 2013, and the endowment was completed by his daughter, Susan K. Taylor, and her husband, Andy R. Loving.