Half the world over, Harry Huge (pronounced Huge-ee) is a hero.
That’s what they call him in the hills of West Virginia, where the high-powered lawyer fought to protect coal miners and their families from abusive union leadership and polluting coal companies. A hero is how he is regarded in South Carolina, where he once helped expose extreme poverty plaguing several rural counties and later helped lead a cancer center. And a hero is how they know him in Estonia, where Huge provided critical assistance to that country’s independence movement and break from the Soviet Union during the Singing Revolution.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Huge has helped injured Vietnamese-American orphans who survived a plane crash, prosecuted terrorists, represented survivors of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and more. If that wasn’t enough, Harry Huge and his wife, Reba, are significant benefactors to the College of Charleston, too. Among the gifts of the Harry and Reba Huge Foundation are scholarships that benefit students of the Honors College and those interested in studying abroad in Estonia. Additionally, Reba Huge, a College of Charleston Foundation board member, has long been involved with the School of the Arts, establishing a music scholarship in 2012.
Zach Sturman is a sophomore from South Florida who knows firsthand the advantages of these gifts. An Honors College student and William Aiken Fellow, Sturman was also selected to be one of four inaugural Huge Scholars at the College. Beyond receiving full scholarships to attend the College, Huge Scholars are also provided with specialized mentoring and the means to engage in summer study-abroad trips. This past summer, Sturman traveled to Cuba, where he was pleasantly surprised to discover a population friendly to Americans and already well versed in American culture, despite the decades-long trade embargo America put in place against Cuba.
This summer, Sturman will enjoy a much different international locale. The intrepid Sturman is heading to Estonia’s capital of Tallinn, where he will work as a U.S. Department of State intern in the U.S. Embassy. And to his delight, Sturman’s May arrival will coincide with a visit to Estonia by leaders of the Huge Foundation, who have organized meetings between Estonian political leaders as well as academic representatives from the College of Charleston, Harry Huge’s alma mater of Nebraska Wesleyan University and the University of Tartu (Estonia). Sturman, who is majoring in political science and Spanish, is confident such meetings will contribute to a meaningful summer in Estonia as he works on political and economic policy issues at the embassy. The Huge Foundation, meanwhile, believes such interaction between Americans and Estonians will foster even greater collaboration between the two countries and enhanced student exchange programs.
Philanthropists Reba and Harry Huge (seated) with President Glenn McConnell ’69 (standing, center) and the 2014–15 Huge Scholars
Though the Huges grew up nearly 5,000 miles away from Estonia in Nebraska, the Baltic state has secured a very special place in their hearts. In the 1970s, Harry Huge’s high-profile legal work in West Virginia caught the attention of President Jimmy Carter, who named Huge to a presidential advisory committee on American nuclear policy. There, Huge worked closely with committee chairman Tom Watson Jr., the former head of IBM. When Watson next became ambassador to the Soviet Union, he urged Huge to travel to Tallinn and meet with a number of Estonians who were itching to break away from Soviet control. Huge did so, came away impressed and began representing the Estonians’ interests in Washington. Happily for Huge’s clients, Estonia gained its independence in 1991. Fifteen years later, Huge was recognized for his contributions to the country’s independence movement when Estonia awarded him the prestigious Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana at the presidential palace in Tallinn.
“They wanted to preserve their own culture and language, restore their own state and determine their own future,” Huge says of Estonia’s independence. “I had a first-row seat to how you start and create your own country.”
With his namesake foundation supporting exchange programs, Huge says, colleges in the United States and Estonia are grooming future leaders who will have benefited from significant international experience and exposure. Everyone, in short, comes out a winner.
“They have a lot to teach us, and we have a lot to teach them,” he says.
Sturman, it seems, is just as grateful to the Huges as the people of Estonia. He credits the Huge Scholar and William Aiken Fellow Society programs for facilitating one-of-a-kind research and mentoring opportunities. Additionally, says Sturman, these programs have a good track record of placing students into competitive jobs, internships and graduate schools.
“It’s better than advertised,” he says of the College’s top academic scholarships and associated support staff. “These people mean business.”
Recalling a meeting at the Huges’ home in Charleston, Sturman said he was bowled over by the couple’s kindness.
“They said, ‘You’re part of our family. Let us know what we can do for you,’” says Sturman, sharing sentiments that have been expressed about the Huges the world over.
“The Huges,” he says, “are some of the most selfless and generous people I’ve ever met in my whole life.”
They are, in other words, heroes.
