Scotia mine disaster of ‘76 remembered

34 years later, a marker tells of blasts’ effect

OVEN FORK — The family and community members sitting in folding chairs, listening to music and speeches about the Scotia mine disaster of 1976, don’t need a highway marker to remind them of their loss.

The marker is for everyone else, and it’s a long time coming, they said.

A marker placed on U.S. 119 at Oven Fork Tuesday marks the 34th anniversary of two explosions that killed 26 miners and mine inspectors in three days.

Earl Dotter

The Rev. Wade Hughes, left, of West Frankfort Church of God responded to the Scotia mine disaster to comfort survivors and family members.

• Dust-exposure limits sought by MSHA

  WHITESBURG — The Mine Safety and Health Administration is trying to have new regulations to limit miners’ dust exposure ready for public hearings in the fall, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Gregory Wagner said at a public meeting Tuesday.

  Data show that although incidences of black lung disease fell for about 30 years since the passage of legislation limiting dust levels in mines, for the past 10 years black lung has been on the rise again.

  That might be because mines have increased production, miners work more overtime, miners cut into more silica-rich rock to reach previously inaccessible coal seams, and operators’ commitment to low dust levels “isn’t what it should have been,” Wagner said.

  Eastern Kentucky is a “hot spot” for black lung diseases, but not enough miners participate in X-ray screenings, studies and surveys, officials said.

  Sometimes mine companies discourage participation, said Anita Wolfe of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. She said miners sometimes avoid screenings because the sooner they find out they have black lung, the sooner they have to quit working, and the more likely it is that they will miss out on full-disability benefits. They see black lung as inevitable, so they want to work as long as possible, she said.

  Federal and state officials want to change that perception.

  “Act now,” miner Scott Howard said, asking MSHA to implement lower dust-exposure limits immediately and to require personal monitoring devices that would continuously measure miners’ dust exposure over an entire shift, instead of just eight hours.

  That’s the direction the agency is going, Wagner said. Dust monitors have been tested and approved for use, and some companies already are using them, he said.

The first explosion, set off when faulty equipment ignited methane built up in a poorly ventilated mine, was on March 9, 1976.

The second methane explosion occurred two days later as miners and Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors reached the site of the first explosion to investigate and document problems in the mine.

Misty Griffith wasn’t even born when her father died in the first explosion, yet she wept as Amazing Grace was sung in memory of Robert Griffith.

“It means everything to me that people remember,” said Misty’s grandmother and Robert’s mother, Minerva Hayes, of Whitesburg.

The world paused and turned to Scotia that day, said Mike Caudill, CEO of Mountain Comprehensive Health Corp., which sponsored the memorial marker.

The day is “forever burned in the memories of those who lived here during that time,” Caudill said.

The Rev. Wade Hughes still has his diary from that day. He was asked to break the news to families keeping vigil that no survivors would be coming out to meet them. “That moment and the following moments I will not try to describe,” he said. “I had just come from a high decibel of expressed agony. I was really taken by how silent everything was.”

Even though Scotia later became Blue Diamond and then the Cumberland River Coal Company, the union, one of few maintained in Eastern Kentucky, is still called the Scotia Employees Association, said union president Eddie Bentley.

“It changed coal mining,” Bentley said of the disaster, which is cited in part as reason for passage of landmark mine safety legislation of 1977.

“We’re here to remember. To honor men who died. We’re here to remember why it happened and to make sure it never happens again,” said Gregory Wagner, deputy assistant secretary for policy for the Mine Safety and Health Administration. “The facts of this are really pretty cold. … The facts can’t explain the human toll.”

The men died because “production was chosen over the lives of the men who mined the coal,” Wagner said.

“It’s a long time coming,” said Rose Kelley of Cincinnati, whose brother and cousin survived the first explosion but died before they could be rescued.

Her sister, Pat Huff, said she was glad something good came out of the disaster, and she said she thought her brother would have liked the ceremony on the sunny day in the parking lot of the union hall.

“There’s not a day goes by I don’t think of him,” she said.

http://www.kentucky.com/2010/03/10/1174671/scotia-mine-disaster-of-76-remembered.html

Documentary recalls 1958 school bus crash that killed 26 children in Floyd County

By Rich Copley rcopley@herald-leader.com

Associated Press

A school bus that carried 26 children and a driver to their deaths is shown after it was pulled from the Levisa Fork, Floyd County, near Prestonburg, Ky., on March 3, 1958. Fifteen bodies where found inside the bus.

Courtesy of Michael Crisp

Filmmaker Andrew Moore edited some of the footage for the documentary film The Very Worst Thing.

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Trailer for ‘The Very Worst Thing’

For more information on the film, click here.

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IF YOU GO

‘The Very Worst Thing’ premiere

What: Documentary film about 1958 Floyd County bus crash.

When: 8 p.m. Feb. 24.

Where: Kentucky Theatre, 214 E. Main St.

Tickets: $10 at the door or call (859) 231-7924.

Learn more: www. theveryworstthing.com.

• From the archives: 50 years later … ‘It still hurts’

Every once in a while, filmmaker Michael Crisp wonders what would have happened if his mother and uncles had not moved out of Prestonsburg in 1955. Would he be here? Or would they have been on the bus?

“The wreck happened in 1958,” Crisp says. “My mom grew up in an area of Prestonsburg and Floyd County called Buffalo that would have been on the bus route. The bus route covered four little communities, and she and a few of my uncles were of an age where they probably would have been on the bus.”

The bus was a school bus that plunged into the swollen Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River on Feb. 28, 1958, killing 26 children and the bus driver. More than 50 years later, it remains the worst school bus accident in U.S. history.

While Crisp was growing up, his mom and dad, who came from nearby Martin, occasionally would pull out newspaper clippings and talk about the tragedy. Crisp says it would send a chill through him, but over the years, it also fired his creativity.

The Georgetown resident is an entrepreneurial entertainer and artist who has been involved in businesses such as a disc-jockey service, an improv comedy troupe, bands and a wedding videography service.

“Winter is kind of a slow time for wedding videography,” says Andrew Moore, Crisp’s partner in that endeavor. “That’s when Mike starts getting ideas.”

One of those ideas became a film about the 1958 tragedy.

After two years of work, The Very Worst Thing premiered Friday in Prestonsburg and will be shown in Lexington on Wednesday night at The Kentucky Theatre.

In the beginning, Crisp was inspired by a 2008 article by Herald-Leader reporter Cassondra Kirby, who now works for the Kentucky State Police; Jackie Branham Hall’s 2004 book Portrait of a Disaster; and other records of the tragedy.

He says he decided that “this deserves to be a documentary to where it can be shown and the rest of the U.S. can learn more about this.”

Crisp and Moore worked for two years on the film, primarily composed of interviews with people connected to the tragedy, and press and personal photographs, many courtesy of Hall.

Only one of the 21 survivors of the crash who are still alive agreed to talk to Crisp and Moore on camera, Martha Burchett Marsh, who now lives in Columbus, Ohio.

“Most of the survivors still have very deep survivor’s guilt,” Crisp says. “They feel that it’s something of an affront to talk about it on camera because they are still close to people in the area who lost children.”

Marsh gives a vivid account of the scene on the bus that cold and cloudy day.

About 7 a.m., the bus was following its morning route from the mining town of Cow Creek to Prestonsburg. It approached a tow truck trying to pull a pickup out of mud along the side of the road. For reasons never determined, the bus’ driver, John Alex DeRossett, 27, didn’t slow down. The bus struck the wrecker, knocking it more than 60 feet. The bus ran off the road and then plunged into the river, which normally was about 10 feet deep but had swollen to more than 30 feet after days of rain.

Marsh’s description is lucid and matter-of-fact, though she occasionally gets choked up recalling scenes like children in the freezing water grasping at one another trying to get out of the bus.

Other witnesses in the film include friends and relatives of victims, people who worked in the rescue operation, a minister who presided over seven of the 27 funerals, and people intimately associated with reverberations of the tragedy more than 50 years later.

“There would be nights I would be working on editing the film, hearing these awful stories over and over again, and my son would be playing right behind me, tugging on me,” Moore says. “I found I sometimes had to step away from the emotion of it and not put myself in their places.”

Crisp, who has a 4-year-old son, says, “Every time we heard a new story, it personally affected us. … I never hugged my son so hard as after days of shooting this.”

Moore says he and Crisp chose to focus on those stories as opposed to dissecting the accident. “Details of the accident tend to muddy each other when you set them side by side,” he says.

The reason for the crash has never been determined. Theories include mechanical failure, medical emergency or even that the crash just could not have been avoided. Those are presented in the film, but Moore says the filmmakers put their focus on personal aspects of the tragedy, such as stories of students who heroically left safety to help friends and siblings only to die themselves.

They also looked at the crash’s enduring effects, including the creation of the Floyd County Emergency and Rescue Squad, formed shortly after the accident.

After area premieres, Crisp and Moore hope to enter The Very Worst Thing in film festivals to get it seen by more people and maybe garner some notoriety.

But they say they have achieved their primary goal.

Says Moore: “I think everyone who participated was highly conscious of wanting to get this story down and providing a lasting document of what happened.”

Says Crisp: “I consider this the community’s picture and Appalachia’s film.”

Story from the Lexington Herald Leader.  http://www.kentucky.com/2010/02/21/1150639/applachian-tragedy.html

 It was during this period of time that my story begins.  It is the story of a wealthy Cherokee, a trip of unknown purpose, a love, and a legacy that haunts me even now.  He came doing business and stayed long enough to leave his mark. Do we know all the parts of the story? Sadly we don’t, but we know enough to piece together the story of a Cherokee man and the young girl who bore his daughter alone.

 She was very young, no more than a child by the standards of today. And yet she must have been old enough to feel those first emotions of love. To be turned by the dark eyes and black hair of a man much older, much different than any she had known so far. We will never know the details of their story… did they love? Was she a victim of an older, more knowing man? From the story handed down we believe that these two very different people fell in love. It would have been a forbidden, secretive love, kept quiet and away from family and friends prying eyes.  As young love is wont to do, it became a physical thing, and the young girl was found out when her belly began to grow. Her family must have been devastated by the knowledge, but she was only a child after all, and so they must bear the blame for what had happened along with her. Her Cherokee brave was chased out of the hills and she must have grieved for him and felt very alone. After all, the stigma of an illegitimate child in the early 1800’s would have been very harsh. Time wore on but her brave was very brave indeed and returned when she delivered the baby asking to see her and the child. Once again he was outnumbered and chased from the area. He returned many times, in fact, offering each time to take mother and child back West to his home in Indian Territory. He once came with a whole Band of his brothers and the family feared greatly at that time that they would be attacked.  But alas, young girls don’t often have a say in what becomes of them.  He returned one last time and asked if he could at least leave money for his child, but being turned away yet again, he left and bothered the family no more.  The baby was sent to be raised by her Uncle and her mother eventually wed and had more children.

 Now, in our family, we carry on that small drop of Native blood left by the Cherokee brave. We see his cheeks in our babies faces, his dark skin and darker eyes. He still leaves his mark on every generation. What was once an embarrassment is now a legacy, as I continue a search of some twenty plus years to put a name to the man who was my Cherokee Grandfather. Will I ever find him amid the many records and archives I search? I’d like to think I will some day. And so, I search and archive in the hopes of leaving the completed story for my children. A legacy of the brave and noble race of my red grandfather… a Cherokee warrior.

Historian Bryan Bush and Storyteller Thomas Freese bring exciting and chilling tales of the ghosts of the War Between the States! 

The ghosts of Civil War soldiers still inhabit the battlefields of our Southern States. Veteran re-enactor and historian Bryan Bush traveled to battlefields and researched both tactical history and on-the-ground life of soldiers on both sides of the War.  He and co-author Thomas L. Freese interviewed re-enactors and photographed the places and people who immersed themselves in recreating the soldiers’ camp, social, travel and martial activities. Shots ring out, visitors hear soldiers on the march and see phantom figures, tents and cannon. In first-hand accounts, spirits of Confederate and Union soldiers join re-enactors for breakfast, call them to the line and entreat us to “never again let this happen.” Over a dozen haunted battlefields carry chilling stories, such as Perryville, Sacramento, Stones River, Shiloh, Franklin and Andersonville Prison. Read about the battle fog, lost Rebel drummer boy, bloody pond, invisible rifle volleys, disappearing cemetery and many other amazing tales.

My mother tells me that in 1959, I was born in an old wooden house up a hollow not far from where I live now. The house had no electricity and was lighted by a coal oil lamp. Coal was dug from out of the side of the mountain for heat and cooking purposes. This was done by my father and brothers. Water was carried to our meager little house from a spring that ran from the mountain behind the house. A hole was dug at the bottom of the spring in order to collect the spring water into the hole so we could dip it out with a water dipper and bucket. It was late at night when my mother went into labor and one of my older brothers was sent to get the midwife but did not make it back in time. Mom says it only took one hour for me to appear into this world by the light of a lamp at a whopping 9 pounds and 10 ounces. I was her eighth child to be born and live. My mother had a few miscarriages between the births of her children.

When I was 4 months, my parents traded their land up in this hollow to another small house across the hill in another small community where there was electricity. It was a small two story home with two rooms downstairs and two upstairs. The bottom floor had concrete block walls and concrete floors. The upper floor was old slab lumber. It was very hard to heat and there was a coal stove downstairs with a stovepipe going up and through the roof.

Growing up in this small community was quite an experience. The winters were cold and harsh. The creek which ran in front of our house would freeze solid and ice cycles long enough to sword fight with would hang from our tar paper shingles. There were six of us children living in the home and four older siblings out and married with children of their own. Eventually we would take in two orphaned cousins also.

Most everyone in our small community was poor and hardly anyone knew there was anything different. So essentially we really didn’t know as children just how “poor” we were. There was very little work available for men unless they worked in the coal mines or on one of the government work programs. Dad worked for the CAP program which was called the Happy Pappy program by the community. I can remember waiting anxiously for dad to get home with his metal lunch box. He always managed to save a little something to eat for me or my younger brother Keith. Now that I think about it, he probably went hungry so we could have his little snack left at the end of the day. My father had his first heart attack at age 42. Mostly I remember him being very sick a lot. My Dad, even though ill, managed to make a little money on the side by trading knives on the courthouse wall in the county seat or taking neighbors to the store because they had no means of transportation. Our car was old and barely held together, but it did manage to go most of the time.

My mother never worked outside the home. She was always busy with the home and children. From daylight to dark working to keep us meals prepared and clothes clean to wear. Our meals mostly consisted of pinto beans, pinto bean cakes and potatoes of some variety. We had a few home canned vegetables if we were lucky that year. Our neighbors across the road had let us use a small parcel of land for growing vegetables. Mom and Dad would build a fire pit in our yard for the day and the canned beans would be placed in a large metal tub with rags around the jars to keep them from breaking. Once they had cooked in their jars for right amount time, they would be moved into the house to cool and wait for the canning lid to pop. This would indicate the seal had taken and the food was safe to store for the winter. Our land was small, mostly creek in the front and a steep hillside in the back. We had a small yard to the side that my mother or one of us kids swept faithfully daily if it was not raining. This kept out the grass and the rocks. The yard was our play ground. There was always an endless supply of dirt and rocks to play with and as we got older and the hills provided us with many adventures. The boys could go hunting for squirrel and rabbit and I went there to invent the home of my dreams. I would spend a large amount of time collecting moss for the carpet in the wall-less house. The area would just be defined by branches and stones placed a certain way. There was a large willow tree in our yard which played a large role in our lives other than shade. It was an excellent source of switches for those of us who misbehaved. In those days, a whipping was the way a child was disciplined and I was whipped with several different items. Once I was whipped with a commode brush because I didn’t want to wash the house down. The water had to be dipped from the creek for washing and rinsing. Another time I was whipped with a hot wheels race track for not doing as I was told. I don’t even remember what I did or did not do to get the whipping.

We would stay outside most days from daylight to dark. Our friends from down the road would come and play with us in the hills where we could build our playhouse and put in the carpet made of fresh green moss. Of course there were occasionally bugs to contend with in our new carpet. Our neighbors down the road had a clay bank on their hillside. Clay right there free for the taking. The items we could make from this were endless. Our dishes and pans for our playhouses were made from this natural clay bank. On this same hill was a strawberry patch to die for. All we had to do was go in the patch and pick them. Amazing as it was, not one of us was ever bitten by a snake up there. We saw a few though. We usually could not tell you what kind we had seen. It was just a good idea to run no matter what kind it was.

During the winter months we usually only saw our friends at school. If the snows were very bad, school was called off and all the kids stayed home. This would usually make parents crazy. For us it meant we could bundle up and go outside for skating on the creek and sword fighting with the ice cycles. This lasted until one of us fell through the ice and nearly froze to death. The creek we skated on was never very deep so it was not a matter of drowning, it was just chilling bone cold water that would soak through what clothes we had on and our one pair of shoes would take a long time to dry. This I knew from experience, but ice skating and falling was surely one of the most fun things to do in the middle of winter. It was at that time Mom would declare it was time to come in the house because we would all surely die of pneumonia. By this time we had used up all the ice cycle swords anyhow. My older brothers were allowed a little more freedom and could skate on the road even after dark. I was always a little jealous of the fact they were allowed this privilege. My mother once told me she wished I had been born a boy and there were times I wished I had also.

Eventually we managed somehow to get a small wooden kitchen built onto the side of our house. I have no clue where the wood came from. All I know is this took up part of our yard which was our playground, but did allow a little more spare room for us to eat in. The wood used to build this small addition appeared to be used, apparently had been a torn down building from another part of the community. It included a small side porch which had to become part of our play area. We could take a run and go and jump way out into the yard hoping that one of us would eventually gain flight. Our little brother Ronnie had an incident where he fell off the side porch and cut his hand really bad with a glass he was holding at that time. It was after this we always had metal cups or glasses to drink from. Those things could not be destroyed. They lasted forever. I remember as if it was yesterday. They came in different colors and they could be dropped, thrown or stomped and they always survived. No more cuts from broken glasses. Seems like after the small kitchen and porch was built on our playground was never as much fun ever again. .

I never knew how mom and dad managed to get clothes for all of us. I am sure they were hand me downs from neighbors and some distant family members possibly. We had been on welfare programs and received commodity foods since I could remember due to dad’s illness at a very young age. Commodity foods were items like cheese, rice, peanut butter and canned foods handed out periodically in Inez for those who qualified. Dad had only gone to the 1^st grade and could only sign his name. I had gone to adult night school with him a few times until he learned to write his name. I felt special getting to be a part of this with him. I can remember sitting in the large classroom with all the adults there. The desk seemed really large at that time. I can’t remember anything about the teacher that would have been in front of the classroom teaching adults who had never learned to read or write. I don’t think I even knew this about my dad until I attended night class with him. The most I remember about the night school was a great sadness that my dad would miss a lot in life by not being able to read and write. I really don’t think he viewed illiteracy as a handicap, just a part of life. Dad must have been a really intelligent person since he managed to shop, exchange money, and drive without the luxury of reading anything the signs said. I can’t remember there being any problem getting where we needed to be. Mom had gone to the eighth grade which allowed her the privilege of reading and writing. We always looked forward to first of the month because this when the food stamps came in and for a few brief days there would be sugar and cream for homemade candy and syrup for popcorn balls. We usually had fried chicken on Sunday. Mom would catch the chicken, wring its neck, scorch its feathers off with hot water, pluck it, then cook it. We looked forward to this. Only now would one realize how much work it was when all we have to do is go to the store and buy the chicken. Our ration of food stamps never seemed to last for the month. Luckily there were a couple of small town stores who would extend credit to people to buy food and get them through the month until the first of the month rolled around again.

I remember being barefooted most every summer. A lot of the children I grew up with saved their shoes for special occasions like church or a funeral if we were lucky enough to have some to save. So during the summer it was not unusual to see small children running around barefoot and usually in very few clothes. The summers were very hot. There was no air conditioning in homes or schools. A fan was a luxury item for our neighborhood. One childhood memory that stands out distinctly for me was when for some reason I had rated a new pair of white cloth tennis shoes in the summer. I had stayed all night with my older brother Dallas and his family up in Happy Holler. Mom and Dad had come to pick me up and informed me I had a new pair of shoes in the car. The road leading up the hollow to my brother’s house was so bad a car could not be taken up the hill. Once I received the news about the shoes I went running out the hollow and down the hill which was a dirt road with the top speed of a very happy young girl. On the way down, I stumped my big toe and tore off the toe nail to the point that I could not wear the new shoes for two to three weeks. They were nice to look at, though, until my foot healed.

I experienced religion at a very early age. Children were not spared from the sermons on mountain which included “dinner on the ground”. This meant all the community who wished to attend the regular scheduled graveyard meetings of families, could attend and get dinner. Lots of folks brought covered dishes and the food was great. Most of us kids would wonder away from the preaching and wooden benches to find other ways to pass the time until we could eat our dinner after all the preachers who wanted to preach that day had gotten their turn. Funerals were much different when I was a child also. It seemed every time someone in the community died, families would load up all their children and whoever might be living with them at that time and go visit the dead. This would be at a neighbors house with a coffin and dead body laid out for viewing. Of course everyone had to make a least one trip to the coffin in order to be polite and this included children of all ages. I learned to pray a very young age. I just wasn’t quite sure who I was praying to. I just knew that I suppose to if I did not want to end up in the coffin and worse than that end up in everlasting hell fire and brimstone.

At Christmas time we would have a small Christmas tree on a coffee table and gifts would be delivered to our house by strangers with our names on the packages. Sometimes they were for the right child and the right size. At any rate we were very pleased to get them. I guess we were on a list for people to buy us gifts who more financially stable than we were. I never knew who sent the gifts to us. Mom and Dad would always try to stick a little something under the tree for us also. We never expected anything from them; we knew they gave us all they could under the circumstances. Although we were very poor and had very little, there was a feeling of security and safeness. We never ever went to bed hungry. Not that I can remember.

We had our share of what we thought at that time were tragic events. The youngest of our family, Ronnie, while in his walker stuck both his hands to the coals stove and had severe burns which required dressings and doctor appointments for a while. We had state Medicaid, so our doctor bills were covered. The next to youngest brother, Keith, fell off a twenty five pound lard can and fractured his arm pretty bad which required a cast for several weeks. The older boys were always coming in with gashes, cuts and bruises from falls out of trees, being drug down the bottom by the pony or getting hit in the head with a rock from a hidden neighbor child. All of these were just part of everyday life in our household.

Occasionally I had a few run ins myself. I rolled all the way down the hill behind the neighbor’s house because everyone else was doing it and sliced my leg open. Dad was right on that. He put pressure on it for what seemed to be long time and a bandage and I didn’t even have to have stitches. I do still have the scar though.

By the age of eight or nine, I would go to another brother (Mason) and his family’s house to stay all night and baby sit sometimes for them. It happened to be in the same holler I was born in. It was a long dirt road with a creek running across the road about mid way up and had berries hanging off the vines along the way up the road when they were in season. There was now electricity up this holler. I loved going up there to stay over and visit. Even though my family had moved out when I was only four months old, I felt a certain connection to this place. When I was up there, it was like the rest of the world ceased to exist. The water still had to be gotten from the spring in the mountain that my mother had told me about many times. The water was always cold and fresh. The berries hanging from the vines were the sweetest and juiciest berries one could ever want to eat. I think my brother would have appreciated more picking for canning and less eating, but he never said anything to us. The creek clear and clean made an excellent swimming hole for all us kids during the summer time. It was just right, under a cool shade of trees and not so deep as to worry about drowning. Barefooted didn’t matter up here because the water and landscape were just right for no shoes.

Our neighbors down the road from us at Beauty with the clay bank on their mountain always had a hog killing every fall. There was a huge rock protruding in the middle of their yard with a slant on it just right for playing on in the summer and slaughtering a hog in the fall. The adults would kill the hog before the children got there to watch the slaughter. The hog was placed on the rock and split wide open very carefully not to cut the intestines or organs that would damage the meat. The organs and intestines were removed while we children stood back in amazement at the sight taking place before us. The adults explained each part to us as it was removed if we wanted to know what the part was and of course I wanted to know. I found it very remarkable to see the insides of an animal that have been living earlier that day and would now provide food for this family through the winter. I never remember being afraid or disgusted at the site of the yearly procedure. It was just a part of life. Sometimes our family would be lucky enough to part of the pork to cook with potatoes. We usually got the head or the feet, but it was enough to flavor the potatoes really good with some cornbread on the side.

Bathing and toileting was quite an adventure in our home. We had no bathroom or running water until I was about 12 years old. Mom would heat water on the coal stove and poor it into a number four wash tub for bathing. I was the only girl left at home with a group of boys, so I got to go first and then the boys would take a dip after me. Our toileting was done in an outhouse built away from the house which was usually a small wooden building with a makeshift door. Inside would be a bench with two holes leading to big hole underneath that had been hand dug by Dad or some of the boys. Once this was full, the toilet had to be moved to a new location and this hole filled in. There were always some interesting creatures in our outhouse. Usually spiders, lizards and an occasional snake could be seen.

Mom always kept our clothes clean as few as they were. She used a wringer type of washer. This is the type where she would carry water to the washer, let them wash; put them manually through a wringer (which was 2 rollers that squeezed the water out of the clothes). Then she would carry water to the tub set up for rinsing the clothes and once again send them through the wringer to get the water out and then hang them on a clothes line to dry. This worked pretty well unless it was winter, then clothes had a tendency to freeze into ice which presented a whole new set of problems. Usually wet clothes were strung all over the house in order to dry. The wringer washer was forbidden for use by children or careless adults. I had heard my share of horror stories where someone had their hair sucked into the rollers and found dead or their scalp pulled right off their head. Needless to say, I wanted nothing to do with laundry.

I grew up pretty much a tomboy. I had three older brothers living at home and two younger brothers. This did not include the two male cousins who had been orphaned and also lived with us for awhile. My mother had little time to teach me feminine behavior, so I picked up what I could from my peers at school by watching them. I climbed trees, went squirrel hunting and rode ponies like my brothers. I’m not so sure they were real happy with having to teach me a girl how to do things that boys were doing. Usually every time I begged to be taught how to do something, I was nearly killed in the process. When I asked to learn to ride a bike they took to the top of a bank pointed me toward the creek and sent me down the bank. I of course went into the creek, but did learn to ride the bike and eventually learned how to use the brakes. I begged to ride the pony that one of my older brothers (Carlos JR) obtained in some time of trade somewhere. He was a cute little black and white fellow and looked quite harmless. He and another brother(Granville) lifted me upon to the back of the pony without a saddle of course and slapped it on the behind. This was a ride I would not soon forget. The pony took off at full speed down the bottom from our house. I slid to the underside

of the pony while holding on for dear life. All I could see was the underside of the pony. Eventually the pony came to a stop and I never ask for that favor again. I guess they had a way of getting me out of their hair for a while.

We also had neighbors across the road that I often played with. They had four daughters, which was great for me. They must have had a lot more money than us because they had real Christmas presents from their own parents and Santa Claus. Mary Jane and I decided we were going to be models when we grew up. We knew we had what it took if only given the chance. They also had a color television and received three channels on it. This was the first color television I had ever seen. I had no idea how beautiful people on television could look in color. In my home we had one small television that was black and white. We got one channel when the weather was good and the wire going up the mountain to the antenna was not covered with brush or trees. It was my brothers’ jobs to work the line after a rain or storm and clear the branches so we could at least see the evening news and Wild Kingdom. My youngest brother Keith had his first experience with a black racer snake doing this one year. He had walked the line and cleared the branches. These snakes love a good run as my brother would find out that day. He ran down the hill and snake stayed after him. That was probably the fastest he ever got off that hill. Later he would learn that if he had stepped aside the snake would have passed him up.

Our family outings usually didn’t cost anything, but that wasn’t unusual in our community. One of Dad’s favorite things to do when he had a few quarters was to say “Let’s take a ride and get an ice cream”. This was just for me, my two younger brothers and Mom and Dad. That was the best ice cream I ever tasted. For the whole family we would fix a picnic of whatever food we had in the house, make a big jug of Kool Aid and go to the lake in the next county for the day for swimming and fishing. We would find a picnic area or spread a homemade quilt and then we kids would jump in the water with old inner tubes that had been patched and no longer usable for car tires. These would keep us afloat. We would come home in the back of a pick up truck usually all sun burned and exhausted, but feeling privileged we had experienced such a wonderful day of fun. Surely we were blessed. I am not sure where the truck or the gas money came from to make these trips.

During the summer of 1970, I would soon learn that nothing in our lives had prepared us for what was about to happen. We had always been poor apparently; we had injuries, Dad’s illnesses, and financial hardships and always seemed to come through. It was July and school was out for the summer. Several of the smaller children, including my youngest brother Ronnie who was five, had been out playing and came in the house through the side kitchen door and reported they had seen an angel. The adults never took them seriously and told them to go back out to play thinking it must their imagination. A few days later birds flew down our stove pipe and all through our house which had never happened before. Once again no one thought anything of this. About a week later our family decided to take another picnic trip to the local pond in our county. We packed a lunch, took fishing gear and even our neighbors across the street were allowed to go with us which never happens. The day was wonderful. We had great time fishing, eating and skimming rocks. Little did we know this would be our last great outing all together?

A few days after this outing trip, my parents decided to go visit my brother and his family. It was later in the afternoon after hot sun had cooled a bit. I did not want to go and had gone across the road to the neighbor’s house to watch the bulldozer working the yard across from our house. I had not been there long when I heard tires squeal and a loud thump. I looked up in the air to see the limp body of my youngest brother Ronnie flying through the air. I then heard screaming. I ran across the road toward my house where everything was at this time in total chaos. Most of it is still a blur for me. I saw my Dad down the road where my little brother would have landed from the impact of the vehicle. I immediately ran down the road to see my brother and my Dad. I knew my brother was hurt but death was not a big concept for an eleven year old. I do not know where my eight year brother who had been standing beside him was at this time. I looked down at my brother and all I could see were his eyes big and wide open and his body mangled. My Dad with tears told me to go back to the house. I do not remember what I did when I got there. Everyone was crying and screaming.

At some point that evening I learned that my brother was dead. My Dad had held him in his lap all the way to funeral home. I don’t know who drove him, maybe a deputy or someone. EMS was not a big item at that time. They did not take my Dad and his beloved son to the hospital. He was already dead. They took him to the funeral home where my Dad had to hand his baby to the coroner forever gone from us. Dad returned home empty handed with a bloody shirt on and began looking for a gun to kill the man who had hit his child. Someone took the gun and subdued my father to keep him from committing murder. My mother was distraught. She was screaming and crying. She asks me why I was not watching my youngest brother. It took a few days for me to learn even why my brothers were across the road. My parents had planned on visiting my brother and the youngest boys crossed the road to wait on mom and dad. At some point they decided to come back across the road to the house. That is when the five year old stepped out in front of the station wagon that would end his short life.

Being the poor family that we were, it was cheaper to keep my little brother and his coffin in our house for the wake and funeral. We had to wait for an older brother Randall to get flown home from Germany. He was in the army. Our house was full of people, some neighbors, and some strangers. Many people brought food and stayed up all night. For five long days my little brother’s dead body lay in our house. Finally it was over. The funeral was done and we buried our little brother up on the hill. Family and friends threw dirt over his little coffin while most of us screamed and cried during the process.

My parents were grief stricken, all of us knew a fear and insecurity we had never known. No one was able to help the other. I don’t think my parents hardly knew they had other children during their grief. No one could hold us. No one could make this better. All the neighbors and strange people had left and gone back to their lives. But I felt we had essentially died as a family the same day my brother died. We had some new company in our home, but only the three of us who had seen the death were aware of the sounds and events taking place in our home. We would hear footsteps upstairs; a woman’s voice would sometimes hum a tune late in the night. Birds would fly up to our windows and peck to get in until dad ran them away again and again or killed them. I no longer felt safe and secure in my home and never would again. The reality of death at age eleven had taken a toll on me. If a five year could suddenly be dead, then anyone could.

Summer moved along slowly with lots tears, blaming and anger. There was anger between mom and dad. I also believe there was anger directed at us children. No one received psychological counseling in those days. We had to just get a stiff upper chin and take it. School started back in the fall and we were expected by the school and the family to resume activities as before. I did on the outside, but could not recover on the inside. I had terrible headaches and stomach aches. I was diagnosed with an ulcer which required I eat baby food through the whole 6^th grade year. Distance had developed between me and my brothers, although I continued to feel very protective of my youngest brother who was now nine years old. He had changed and become very introverted. He never spoke much and he would not even answer the phone.

Oh yes by the way, my parents received fifteen hundred dollars for the loss of their baby child and we got a bathroom and a phone. We would have gladly taken our brother back.

I became a cheerleader in the eighth grade thanks to a very good middle school teacher and cheerleader sponsor. She picked me up for practice and took me home afterword. She also bought my cheerleader shoes. There should be more people in the world like her who want to make a difference in someone’s life that otherwise would not have had a chance. I went to work when I was twelve the very next summer. This was my first job. I was so young, I was paid out of a miscellaneous fund. Thereafter I worked every school year and every summer on school programs. This was to help at home and to buy school clothes. It is almost sad to say my summers were never barefoot again. Many times I wished to go back to the barefoot summers and carefree childhood that I lost at age eleven.

Many years have gone by since my childhood experiences. They made me who I am today. I have learned many things about life and a lot of them I learned early. Most days I feel good about who I have become. I treat people around me the way I would like to be treated. I still deal with a few phobias and have overcome a lot of them. I take one day at a time and try to live life as if this might be the last day I have or someone I love might have.

Project Dateline: Pilgrim resident survives floods, war

PILGRIM — It’s cold out and it’s wet and this trip is taking forever. The signs that are supposed to tell you how to get here don’t help much.

After a while there just aren’t any signs that try to help anymore.

Then you remember that “pilgrim” is, in the literal Latin, “far afield.”

Charles Bertram

Jack Adams came back home to the town of Pilgrim after his tour of duty with the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War. 

Charles Bertram

Both KY 1714 and Wolf Creek wind their way along the community of Pilgrim in Martin County.

CLICK FOR MORE PHOTOS

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• SLIDE SHOW: Pilgrim, Ky.

No one needs to explain how this town in farthest Martin County got its name.

Finding it requires desire that had to, originally speaking, run pretty deep.

Even now, global positioning satellite technology is taking you down dirt roads that stop dead in the middle of nowhere.

Nature, all fawn brown and steel grey now, isn’t exactly a beacon either.

Oh, wait. Here is Pigeon Roost. There is Wolf Creek.

It is here somewhere, a town named after those who had the courage to head out more than 400 years ago and go really, really far afield in all the ways possible.

Somehow Moses Stepp found this Pilgrim without help.

Stepp and a handful of others located this place after he was granted a goodly portion of it as payment after exemplary service in the Revolutionary War.

Jack Adams stands on his own porch on the very land that Stepp earned. Stepp’s grave is just up the road a ways, dutifully marking (1736-1856) the 120 years that he is said to have lived.

The Stepps, the Webbs, the Adamses all trace back to Moses and his decidedly determined will to make this wide bottomland their home.

It’s where historic floods try to retake the land on a regular basis, most recently in 1957, 1963, 1977 and 2004.

And still the Pilgrims stay. It’s the place where, on Oct. 11, 2000, a coal sludge impoundment pond broke and 306 million gallons of viscous toxic goo poured into two branches of the Tug River.

One of those was Wolf Creek, which wends its way through Pilgrim. Everything living in the creek died.

“That will never go away in our lifetime,” says Adams, who remembers the slow-moving sludge and how he tossed a rock in it from the highest railroad bridge and watched the rock ride as it made its way through town.

Adams is a former coal miner and he’s trying to make peace with it all. Still, Pilgrim is his town and Wolf was his creek.

Adams’ family is pure Pilgrim. It is where, in 1938, his grandfather Webb set the state record for the most corn grown per acre and harvested by mule.

It’s where Jack and wife Brenda mind the cemetery nearby even though they don’t know exactly who’s in it.

It’s the place he once ached to leave but, once he did, ached to get back to. That was in 1967 when he was in the Navy during the Vietnam War.

“No matter how bad you wanted to get out of a place, and I did, you begin to need some reference to your home place,” he says.

“Don’t get me wrong. They didn’t show Pilgrim in the Encyclopedia Britannica. But we were out on tour sometimes for nine months at a time and it got so I couldn’t wait to get home.”

It had not been an easy war for Adams, as if any war is easy. He had been on the flight deck of the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 29, 1967, when a rocket accidentally fired from a Phantom jet fighter and struck the fuel tank of Lt. Cmdr. John McCain’s aircraft. The resulting explosions and conflagrations killed 134 and injured more than 161.

Adams was on a hose when a fire turned him back right after the first bomb went off on deck.

He says there is no reason he should be alive.

He has spent his life in thanksgiving, he said solemnly, “but you can’t outgive God.”

He has tried, coming home to be a Martin County deputy sheriff, a firefighter, a coal miner, a husband, a father to two and a grandfather to three.

His wife, Brenda, is a nurse who will be working Thanksgiving but will be cooking for the family on Friday so everybody can shop, knowing there will be sustenance when they’re done.

Then the family will put up outdoor Christmas decorations which, when lit, judging from Brenda’s usual display of six indoor Christmas trees, should be a beacon to the pilgrim in need of direction.

http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/story/1035604.html

By:  Patricia Samples Workman

We’d just moved back to California. It was early 1959 and I’d started first grade. We lived in a house with a vacant lot for a yard.  It was located just a few houses over from the Harbor Freeway.  You could see the signs on the freeway for the Imperial Highway exit.

We had a green and yellow parakeet, which probably came from Aunt Judy.  She kept a parakeet rookery in her backyard at her house in South Central for a couple of years.  We kept him in a small cage.  Grandma covered his cage every evening.  (She said it let him know it was time to go to sleep).  Grandma routinely took him out of his cage and we’d play with him.  It was always fun.

One day, I was putting him back in the cage and I accidentally broke his neck.  I was holding him when Mom told me he was dead.  He looked fine to me and I told her so. Mom took him from me, and then gave him to Grandpa to bury.  Dusty and I slipped out of the house, secretly watching Grandpa as he dug a tiny hole at the edge of the vacant lot that was our yard.  As he shoveled dirt over the bird, I still had my doubts.

A couple of days later, I mentioned the absence of our bird to Dusty.  I missed playing with him.  I still had it in the back of my mind that he wasn’t really dead.  It seemed to me that my family was ALWAYS telling me something was dead.  I was in a show me, deviant state of mind.  After all, I was in school now, so why should I have to believe them?

We crept out to the site of the tiny grave. We were on the look out for the adults as we began to dig.  Dusty had a stick, but I used my bare hands in the dirt.  Before long, we unearthed the bird.  I held him in my grubby little hands; but there was something VERY different about him.  He was stiff, cold and covered with dust.  He didn’t move around and play with me either.  In addition to this, he smelled funky.  Despite all the negatives, I still wanted to hold him and play with him for awhile.  The longer I held him, the more intense the odor became to me.  It began to overwhelm me. 

Suddenly, everything came together in my mind.  In a split second, I realized the unusual odor was the smell of death.  Our little parakeet was dead.  (It was one of my earliest grownup moments).  I told Dusty we needed to put the bird back before we got caught.  I laid him back in his tiny grave and we covered him with the loose dirt.  The whole incident lasted ten to fifteen minutes, but I’d learned a valuable life lesson.

In my short life, I’d experienced the death of my baby sister, a puppy and now our parakeet. In hindsight, digging up the bird wasn’t the act of two ornery kids; rather, I needed proof the bird was actually dead.  I needed to see a glimpse of what death looked like–after the fact.

A few months earlier, we had a puppy when we were living in West Virginia.  I remember the puppy running around the floor of the living room.  When Mom said the puppy was choking to death, I didn’t believe her.  Then I noticed he was acting funny and making strange noises.  Then it dawned on me what Mom said was true.  He was choking…poor little thing…I couldn’t stand it anymore… I started crying.  Grandpa saw my reaction and took the puppy outside before it died.

A year prior to that, I lost my baby sister.  She only lived one day.  Her death was an unexpected tragedy in our lives. When I stood beside her tiny casket, my heart was breaking.  I couldn’t take my eyes off her precious face. I knew that once I left her side, I’d NEVER see her again.   The pain of her loss overwhelmed me.  I knew I would never forget her brief life here on earth.

I suppose when Mom told me the parakeet was dead, I was at the stage in my life where I needed proof.  When someone or something dies, it’s gone from this life forever.  Nothing can change that simple fact.  It could be a loved one or a cherished pet.  Although the loss is painful—all your memories, happiness and love continue to live on in your heart.  As a result, a person never really dies if someone remembers them.  No one knows for sure what awaits us after death.  I choose to believe I will see my loved ones again.

My primary memories of this trip are of being sick and the noxious diesel fumes from the buses.  Grandma was doing her best to make me feel better with the meager resources she had on hand. We were out in the middle nowhere in the desert Southwest.  It was arid desert as far as the eye could see.  There wasn’t more than sand, cactus, tumble weeds and rattlesnakes.

There were Ki-yoates (Grandma’s terminology) too.  I wasn’t exactly sure what they were, but I was really scared of them.  When we would act up, Grandma would threaten to set us out for the Coyotes.  I thought they had to be some kind of a half-breed, renegade Injun that had been raised by wolves. I could imagine them being much bigger than humans and they had long, sharp teeth…I wasn’t sure they were completely human…Maybe they were wolves…  This was during the 50’s—so I was heavily influenced by all the Westerns on TV and movies like the “Attack of the 50 Foot Woman”.  When the subject of Ki-yoates came up, I immediately settled down.

Back to our trip…the rear seat of the bus was straight across, similar to an old school bus.  Basically, Mom and Grandma had staked out the last two seats on the left hand side of the bus, along with the backseat.  This was before the age of porta-potties on buses.  The bus stopped every two hours for bathroom breaks.  Usually the stop was in a desolate location in the desert.

The bus terminals were always bustling with activity.  There were people everywhere.  Grandma or Mom always held our hands tight as we worked our way through the terminal to make our next connection.  Several people were like us, making connections on the next leg of their journey, some had layovers.  Many of them were traveling to visit to visit relatives, while some were seeking their fortune in the big city, others were returning home in defeat.  

I always enjoyed seeing the servicemen.  They looked dapper in their uniforms. Amid the chaos were men in blue and gold uniforms pushing large carts stacked full of giant while pillows.  They worked for the bus company.  The traveler paid a small fee for the pillow on their bus trip.  Some people could actually afford to replace the pillow with a new one throughout their arduous cross-country journey.  The starched while pillows looked soft and inviting…but I knew we couldn’t afford such a lavish item.

I was sick throughout the trip.  I’ve had problems with motion sickness for as long as I can remember. (It probably goes back to my trip as fetus.  Who knows?) This was Grandma’s initial diagnosis. Later on that night, the bus made a routine stop at a desolate spot in the middle of nowhere.  It was cold and windy (I half expected a tumbleweed to blow past us.) 

We were standing outside the building, beside a red metal Coke machine.  I stood beside Grandma, shivering as the wind gusted around her skirt tails.  She took some changed from her big pocketbook.  I watched her insert the change it to the machine and press a button.  She opened the glass door and pulled out a little glass bottle of Coke.  She opened the bottle and encouraged me to take a small sip.  I took a tentative sip, and then another.  I wasn’t sure what to expect.  When that stayed down, she encouraged me to take a few more sips.  By the time she asked me if I was feeling better,  I wasn’t as nauseous.  The carbonation in the Coke helped to settle my stomach a bit. 

Grandma always carried a bag of pink wintergreen candy in her purse.  Every once and awhile, she’d give me a piece to soothe my upset stomach.  (It usually worked).  The piece of pink candy looked as big as a quarter to me.  Prior to sipping the Coke, nothing had helped with the nausea.  She followed up the Coke with another piece of candy for good measure.  (Over half a century later, I still love the taste of wintergreen.  The pink candy is hard to find now, so I settle for Wintergreen Lifesavers).

The noxious diesel fumes were always present.  However, they were especially bad at the bus terminals and stops.  (I didn’t know it at the time, but I had asthma and allergies.  Diesel fumes are an industrial irritant.  My tiny body was reacting to the constant exposure to the fumes, in addition to the motion sickness.)

Before long it was time to leave.  As we boarded the bus, the diesel fumes overwhelmed me.  I was sick again. The progress we’d made with the Coke and candy was in vain. After we found our seats, the bus pulled back on to the highway.  People began to settle back into their seats, trying to get comfortable

At this point, I was really nauseous.  Grandma gave me a few more sips of Coke.  I sat with Mom and Dusty, while Grandma made us beds on the bus seats, so I could lie down.  That was our last resort.  Sometimes lying down would help with the motion sickness, when nothing else would.

I was happy to have the opportunity to lie down.  I was sick and travel weary.  When Grandma fixed my bed, she came back to get me.  We were sitting on the backseat of the bus.  She took my hand and led me a few steps to the seat where she’d prepared my bed.

Imagine my surprise when I saw one of the giant pillows lying on the bus seat.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  Grandma had made me a special bed with one of the white pillows from the bus terminal.  The pillow was so inviting.

I was small I could fit inside the pillow.  Grandma helped me crawl into the pillow.  The case was my blanket and the pillow my mattress. As I snuggled close to the pillow; I was lost in the sensation of softness and warmth.  Grandma made me feel special—loved.  Although I was sick, I felt safe and secure.  Dusty was lying on the seat in front of me.  Mom and Grandma were on the seat behind us.  I lay in my comfortable bed, listening to the drone of the bus engines.  I felt insulated from the outside world, even though we were speeding down the road on a bus.  As I drifted off to sleep, I basked in the love and devotion of my family.

            As the next day dawned, I’d developed a fever.  By this time Grandma knew my illness was more serious than motion sickness.  I sat on the seat beside Grandma.  She examined me from head to toe (well, as best she could, considering we were traveling on a bus).  I had no idea what she was looking for, so I quietly sat there as she checked me out.

Once she finished checking me out, she put her arm around me and held me close.  She was a large woman, but within her warm embrace, I felt safe and loved. She leaned down and whispered in my ear that I had the Chicken Pox.  (She’d discovered two small blisters; one on the inside of my forearm and other in my ear.  This was the extent of my outbreak).  She told me that this would be our little secret because if anyone on the bus found out, they might make us get off.  We were still out in the middle of nowhere, so the very idea of getting set off the bus scared me to death.  I solemnly promised her that I wouldn’t say a word.  The true nature of my illness was never revealed or discovered.

The rest of our trip was uneventful.  I don’t remember much about our destination.  I didn’t care.  (That year our family made two cross-country trips).  I was happy wherever we were.  If it was a house in Los Angeles, or Grandpa and Grandma’s house in West Virginia; it didn’t matter to me. 

When I was little, traveling was an adventure.  (When I got older, I looked at it as an opportunity to see the country and experience life on the road).  Our destination wasn’t really that important to me as long as I had the love of my family. I always felt safe and secure wherever we happened to be. That’s all that ever really mattered to me…I didn’t care if we were living in California, West Virginia or somewhere on the road in between…

© 2009

Miner

I remember it as if it was yesterday.  Although I did not know the men involved, their families, or even been to their town, I felt their sorrow in the deep pits of my soul.   I truly felt their ups and downs, I prayed for days,  I mourned and I got physically ill. That’s something that bonds all people from mining communities no matter where they are located.  Mining tragedies, no matter who is involved or where they happen, hit home to all miners and their families everywhere because we are all connected on some level to one another. 

I’ll never forget January 2nd, 2006 and the days that followed as long as I live.  I was sitting in my living room glued to the tv, tears rolling down my face as I heard of the 13 men trapped in the Sago mine after an explosion.  I prayed over and over for a safe, happy outcome.  I watched as the news showed as much as they could of the rescue effort and my heart broke for the families who gathered at the little church, much like the one I grew up in, praying for their fathers, husbands, sons and friends, the backbone of their families and community, to come home safely.

I thanked God and cried when the news came that all 13 miners had been found alived.  I cried again as the families were told that the initial news had been a mistake and 12 miners had gone to meet their Lord.  My heart broke when I heard of the letters that they left in their dinner buckets for their families.  That just goes to show you that miners are a special breed, they are God-fearing and family oriented.  Even thought they knew they were facing imminent death, they thought of their loved ones on the outside and put them first.  Their last minutes were spent writing notes to their families.  That is love and dedication.  That is the backbone of America! 

I continued to pray for the family members who had lost their loved ones.  I also prayed for the one lone miner who survived, Randal McCloy.  He had a wife and young children and it was uncertain if he was revived that he would live or that his life would go much farther than being a vegetable.  But miners are tough and Randal fought and won.  He won for himself and for his mining brothers.  He won for his family and the families of his mining comrades who died.  He won despite the odds. 

I’ve often wondered what those last minutes under ground were like.  I honestly believe that they died peacefully.  I envision that an angel visited with them and carried them home in his arms, away from the darkness of the underground mine into the beautiful lights of Heaven.  They faced death with a great amount of dignity and self-sacrifice and I can’t help but think that God made their last trip special.

I would like to dedicate this posting to not only the miners who lost their lives on that horrible, horrible day, but to their families as well.  Even though I do not know you, I feel bonded to you.  You see, I almost lost my father on two occasions to mining accidents.  He is blind in one eye, deaf in one ear and no longer has reflexes.  Mining takes so much from families sometimes.  It makes men old before their time and sometimes takes them from us and yet, knowing all of this, they lay their life on the line for us, for their families, to make our lives better and to provide a good living for those they love.  You see, mining families are always attached, you were not alone during those dark days, all mining families were with you, cried with you, prayed for you and loved you all.  We still pray for you and love you.  Thank you for your sacrifice and may your loved ones rest in peace.

To Randal McCloy, Jr. and his family: You are an inspiration to everyone.  You are God’s miracle.  I am so glad that you are still here to share in the lives of your wife and children.  I would like to honor you as well.

The Fallen of the Sago Mining Disaster: May They Rest in Peace

I was born and raised in Martin Co. in a little place called Beauty, Kentucky, right at the bottom of Buck Creek mountain in our family holler known as Charlie Maynard holler, Charlie being my Grandpa. I loved this place like no other I’ve been in my life time and wouldn’t change a second of my childhood. I guess only those of you that grew up in this area could relate to what i’m talking about when I say there’s no other place we would have rather have grown up in than this place sourounded by a very large and loving family. I wrote this true story for an English paper many years ago and it got such a good responce that I thought I would share it with you guys. I hope you enjoy it.

I remember those clear summer nights. Never too hot never too cold. I could see clearly, Climbing to the top of the mountain pushing our bicycles with sleeping bags in tow. The three, sometimes four, of us were on our way for a long night of camping usually Jimmy, Johnny ,Eddy and myself . I recall lying out under the stars thinking and planning the mischief that young boys can get into, yet never actually doing anything but sleeping. We were all too afraid to go back down the mountain at night.

As those summer nights turned to fall, the trees seemed to magically change into those beauitful colors of red, orange, yellow and purple. I remember wondering why all the leaves on all the trees would change and eventually fall except the ones on the big tree by the family graveyard. As a kid, I thought this tree must have some special purpose. Its seemed to never die-it’s leaves always green even in the worst of winters. It was this same tree that all the chickens used as a nightly resting place, and it stood guard over the family graveyard. only later in life did I come to find out that it was a pine tree and that they are evergreen.

 As Winter would approach, the cool days and nights grew colder and colder. the trees were all naked from the chill of autumn. Then, like a story about Christmas night it would start to snow. Sometimes two or three feet at a time would fall. I recall fourty inches that fell that winter of 81. Though our parents dreaded seeing itcome, the children were all the more eager and happy to miss what was sometimes up to two months of school.

 We would wake up at day break sometimes having to call someone to dig us out of our homes. We would all want to be the first to brave the cold snow and climb up to the top of uncle Tommy’s driveway to blast down on our sleds time after time.

 With socks on our hands for gloves and two to three layers of clothes, we would stay out half the night. The snow would light up the countryside as if it were noon. after being frozen stiff from the cold, we made our way home only to be scolded by Mom and Dad saying we would catch pneumonia. Then we would warm up with Mother’s hot soup and the old coal stove.

 I recall the rains that began to fall as Winter turned to Spring. I remember grandma yelling as we would pick the marble sized apples off the many apple tree we had saying we were going to get worms and have a terrible stomach ache. I can still see the bright red cherries on that poor half broken down cherry tree behind the house. its branches and limbs sagged from the weight of many climbs from years passed.

I remember the loud thrumps as walnuts would fall on the roof of the house, and the green unwashable stains on our hands as we shelled them.

I remember fishing in the pond behind grandma’s house that yeilded only blue gills and one fourteen inch catfish that I had the honor to catch. It was the one ever to come out of that now dried up water hole.

The one thing I remember most of all is the love of a very large and close knit family hollow that I roamed as a child. Although I’ve gone back many time over the years, It seems that too much has changed.  So all I have left is my memories, my memories of home.

                                                             Donnie Spaulding