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Growing up in Bridgewater Township, Dr. Kenneth D. King ’61 was the only African- American child in his school until eighth grade and a member of the only black family in town. At Somerville High School, King was again in the minority, this time as one of the few males in the secretarial business classes. One of his teachers, Isabella A. Van Fleet ’27, noticed his dedication and advised him to continue with his schooling.

“No one I knew had ever been to college,” King says. But Van Fleet explained that she graduated from Rider. “She said, ’I think you should go to school where I went,’ and so she wrote to get the application and gave me the money to apply, and the next thing I knew, I was going to college.”

He began his studies at Rider in 1957 as a business education major, when the Trenton Business College was still located in the state’s capital. His time at the College marked both an ending and a beginning — the class of 1961 was the last to finish in Trenton and the first to graduate in what was then the new gymnasium on the Lawrenceville campus.

King learned much during his time at the University. “At Rider, I wasn’t some nameless student among many,” he says. “My teachers viewed me as an individual and gave me the attention I needed to succeed.”

And succeed he did. After King graduated with a degree in business education, he attended the Teacher’s College of Columbia University, where he earned his master’s degree in business education and then moved to East Orange to teach. After three years, he returned to Columbia to pursue his doctorate. Upon successful completion of the degree in 1970, he again returned to East Orange as an elementary school principal and dedicated his life to service and teaching for the next 46 years.

Recently, King decided to make a planned gift contribution to Rider. “What I learned at Rider set me up to be very successful,” he says. “When you get something like that, you have to give back.”