Reclaiming the American Dream III: The Connecticut Yankee Saving Kids in Southern Ohi

When Alice Chapman moved to Marietta, Ohio, in 1995, she had no intention of taking on the city’s social problems at her own expense. Heir to a Connecticut newspaper fortune, Chapman had lived modestly her whole life but had recently inherited family monies, making it possible to leave her office job at a private school in Philadelphia and move, with her husband, a recently-retired letter carrier, near his aged mother in southern, “Appalachian,” Twenty years later, Chapman—one of four recipients of the Manhattan Institute’s $25,000 2014 Richard Cornuelle Awards for Social Entrepreneurship—has become one of the most-honored citizens of Marietta for her work (full-time, but volunteer) at the Ely Chapman Educational Foundation (ECEF), the institution she founded and largely self-funded.