Faith, family and friends

The agony of not knowing could be seen in the stoic faces of families near Montcoal, W. Va., this morning after a disastrous explosion in the Upper Big Branch coal mine yesterday afternoon.

My grandfather on my mother's side -- Horace Nichols -- chose wisely when he decided that the way out of the poverty of hardscrabble farming in Southwest Virginia in the early 1900s was through the C&O railroad and not through a job in a coal mine.

I've visited those far reaches of Virginia -- down where Virginia comes to a sharp point aimed at Kentucky and Tennessee and a little farther north where Virginia shares a border with West Virginia -- and life in the mountains is, for many, still harder than most of us can imagine. Jobs are few. Mere subsistence is still a hand-to-mouth way of life for too many. Coal mining, despite the dangers, offers a paycheck for those without many other opportunities.

So this morning when I watched the unfolding story of the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine near Montcoal, W. Va., the story had a particular relevance.

I heard a Red Cross worker interviewed on a TV network newscast talk about how tightly knit the coal mining communities are and how strongly they depend on "faith, family and friends." I got a taste of that strength in the early 1960s at the University of Richmond. Many of my Phi Delta Theta fraternity brothers were from families whose lives were inextricably tied to the coal mines of Pennsylvania. In most cases, those Phi Delt brothers from coal-mining country were the first to break out of the cycle that had seen their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers go to work in a hole in the ground. Their families had done without, worked hard, and scrimped and saved to give their sons a shot at a better life. Those college friends of mine were tough boys who still retained their covenant with "faith, family and friends," and they were good boys on whom you could always depend.

I covered an accident in the early 1960s -- at a small mine in Louisa County. I remember families, mine officials, police, firemen and reporters standing vigil in the dark near the mine's entrance, waiting through the night for news. It was a tough assignment, but what I felt was nothing like the anxiety the families were feeling.

Coal mining is an arduous, dangerous job, and you can't help but wonder why anybody would chose it. And then you realize: It's all about choices. And sometimes there are precious few.