You knew she was an actress, teacher, singer, writer and princess. But did you know Sarah Culberson is also a P.E.O.? She was initiated into Chapter P, Morgantown, West Virginia, in 1998. She is also an adopted daughter of Jim and Judy Culberson of Morgantown, West Virginia. Sarah, her mother and her two sisters are all P.E.O.s.
Sarah grew up happily in this loving family, but as adopted children nearly always do, as an adult she began the sometimes scary process of trying to find her birth
parents. Sarah soon learned that her birth mother had died of cancer many years before, but that her birth father was alive and well—in war torn Sierra Leone, West Africa. Sent to the United States for a college education, Joseph Konia Kposowa met Sarah’s mother while attending college, and the two fell in love. However, the relationship waned, and Joseph honored his commitment to his family to return to Sierra Leone to direct a secondary school. The couple made the heartwrenching decision to place their child for adoption. So it was that at the age of one day more than one year old, tiny Sarah, in a green dress with a yellow butterfly on it, joined the Culberson family.
Joseph is a member of a ruling Mende family in the Bumpe Chiefdom where Sarah’s uncle is a paramount chief, making Sarah a Mahaloi, with the status of princess. She is bumpenya, a lady of Bumpe. As the relative of a paramount chief, she could someday also become paramount chief. It was a stunning discovery that soon set her on a path she could have scarcely even imagined at the outset of her quest.
In her book, co-written with Tracy Trivis, “A Princess Found, An American Family, an African Chiefdom, and the Daughter who Connected Them All,” Sarah talks 
about the challenges of being a biracial child and adjusting to a world where she didn’t look like anyone in her family. She also talks about the love and support that she has always enjoyed from her adoptive family. In Morgantown, Sarah became an accomplished athlete, class president, singer, dancer and actress all while still in high school. One of her earliest stage appearances came at the age of six or seven when she joined the children’s chorus in a summer stock production of La Boheme. She went on to graduate with a fine arts degree from West Virginia University in 1998 and then received her MFA from the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco. P.E.O., however, gave her the star she steers by.
She remembers P.E.O. “aunties” before she knew what they were. “I remember being ecstatic when P.E.O. came to our house. I sat downstairs in our family room waiting for the meeting to end so that I could go upstairs and see again all of the strong beautiful women of Chapter P. I felt, at least for that evening, that I had many mothers.
“When I became a P.E.O., and these dear ladies became my sisters, I learned firsthand about the difference P.E.O. makes for each of us, our community and the world. The Sisterhood’s strong commitment to education for women has
helped me see what I can do in this world. I am grateful to be part of this loving sisterhood.” The P.E.O. education projects for women that Sarah took to heart from her P.E.O. “aunties” so many years ago have been intertwined with the rebuilding of Bumpe High School. In a country ravaged by civil war and where most of the people live in poverty, education for women is paramount. Sarah’s story is evidence that in many ways, great and small, P.E.O. sisters continue to do what they can to promote education for women.
When Sarah found her birth father in a matter of a few weeks after she decided to begin that quest, she soon gathered the courage to approach him, and to visit far away Sierra Leone. She learned that she had a biological uncle in Maryland who welcomed her inquiry and facilitated a phone call to West Africa. She, her uncle and her acting teacher traveled to Freetown, where Joseph met her plane. He presented her with the gift of a green dress which she wore during the five-hour drive from the airport to the village of Bumpe. During that long drive, Sarah and Joseph began to knit their scattered lives more closely together.
Arriving in the village, Sarah was unsettled by her greeting: 250 people lined the road—all dressed in the same green cloth as she was— cheering and waving and welcoming her arrival. It is a tradition in Sierra Leone for all of a village to dress alike for a special occasion, and Sarah’s arrival was more special than she, or they could have ever imagined. In welcoming Sarah to Bumpe, the chief told his villagers, “Our daughter has come home and she can be chief some day.”
For now, Sarah has become devoted to helping rebuild the high school in Bumpe that was destroyed during that country’s terrible civil war that lasted from 1991 
to 2002. Her father is the principal of that school, and that fact now ties part of her life to Africa. Stricken by the village’s damage and the devastation remaining from the long civil war, Sarah vowed to help rebuild the school and return it to its prewar status as a guiding star for the children of Joseph’s village. Instead of palaces, handmaidens and privilege, Princess Sarah chose leadership.
After television appearances on Good Morning America, articles in the Los Angeles Times, People Magazine and many other public appearances, the Kposowa Foundation that Sarah cofounded with John Woerhle has refurbished 12 classroom buildings and two dormitories. Classrooms that were blackened by rebel fires have undergone repair and have been freshly painted. The completely destroyed dining hall and home economics buildings have been rebuilt. Bathroom facilities are currently under construction. Sarah’s adoptive dad along with her birth father worked in partnership with the Rotary Foundation and through this connection together they were able to dig eight clean wells that serve 12,000 people in the chiefdom. On a recent site visit, Sarah’s father reported that the women were singing and dancing in celebration of the well and the clean water it is bringing to their village.
Leonean historians write of the Kposowa family’s long record of service to their chiefdom. Sarah’s grandfather and great-grandfather were both paramount chiefs. Paramount Chief Francis Kposowa, her grandfather, was such an exemplary chief that he acquired the titles of JP (Justice of the Peace), CH (Chief of Honor) and MBE (Member of the British Empire). During his reign (1946-1973), the British government invited him and other exemplary chiefs to London to meet with Queen Elizabeth II. He was the chief in office during Sierra Leone’s independence in 1961 and Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Sierra Leone in 1962. During his reign, he constructed a network of roads between the section towns within the chiefdom and opened many primary schools. Bumpe High School, the first secondary school in the chiefdom, was built with his cooperation by the United Brethren in Christ mission.
The accomplishments of Sarah’s grandfather exemplify how the House of the Kposowas has proven to the 36,000 people in the chiefdom that its representatives will strive to be always worthy of the position. Today Sarah’s uncle, Joseph Tommy Kposowa, is the paramount chief of Bumpe Chiefdom. Sarah’s task as a princess comes not at a peaceful time but at a time when her people are desperate for help. She has kept faith with the tradition of her family’s leadership as she works with many others to restore the school and to forge links between her African roots and her American students in California.
An old African proverb says “. . . if you educate a girl, you educate a community.” Sierra Leone has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the 
world. Thus, Sarah has been especially driven to establish the necessary privacy that teenage girls need as they mature. “So many girls leave school when they
reach menarche,” she explained. “We need to help them stay in school so they can continue the important work of learning.” Sarah is reaching out to yet other students with the gift of education. In January of 2011, Sarah traveled to Bumpe with eight high school students from the Oakwood School in Los Angeles on a quest to connect young people from two cultures. As they talked with each other and participated in activities and projects together, a whole new understanding began to emerge. Sarah wrote that, “I am learning that the more we learn about each other in our vast world, the more likely it is that our children and our grandchildren will face a brighter future. We are one family, under one sky, and we share the same stars at night.”
“P.E.O. has been a warm guiding light in my life,” said Sarah. “Through their loving actions my sisters have taught me the meaning of the P.E.O. star and I have 
grown to learn the importance of this organization and the difference it makes in the world. I am truly grateful to have grown up surrounded by powerful women who have taught me the importance of encouraging and empowering young people and the importance of being of service in the world.”
