Coal Miner's Wife

1. PHOTOCREDITHERE
Xxxxxxxxx. XxxxxxxxxxBY KEVIN CHAPPELL PHOTOGRAPHY BY VALERIE GOODLOE
THECOALMINER’SWIFE
IT TAKES A SPECIAL MAN TO BE A MINER—
and a special woman to love one
LOVE STORIES ARE EVERYWHERE. Unfortunately, it seems as if it takes tragedy before the best ones
are ever told. For 34 years—in the mountains of West Virginia—Geneva Lynch lived a real-life fairy tale.
Rosie saw to it.
That’s what she called her husband William Roosevelt Lynch. “Either that or ‘Honey,’” she says. He called
her “Genny.” To her, Rosie was a prince. To others in the small town of Oak Hill, W.Va., one hour south of
Charleston, he was a 59-year-old coal miner, one of the old-timers who knew the mines like a grizzled trucker
knows the back roads. Genny was a coal miner’s wife. It’s generally agreed that being a coal miner is the tough-
est job in the state. Being the wife of one has got to be a close second.
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2. 94 EBONY l JULY 2010 JULY 2010 l EBONY 95
Coal is often referred to as West Virginia’s “black diamonds.” It’s
honored in museums and studied in grade schools. The stuff’s every-
where. In some places, such as along a winding two-lane road in the
north part of town, coal falls off the side of the mountain in chunks
the size of candy bars. In fact, there is believed to be enough coal in
West Virginia to power the entire United States for decades.
By far, coal mining is one of the best jobs in the state. An experienced
miner can make six figures. There are good benefits. A good retirement
plan. It’s making it to retirement in good health that’s the challenge.
Even though Rosie never talked about it much to her, Genny rec-
ognized the risks. She had encouraged her husband to quit—especially
when she found out recently that he was at a site where he had to
forage some two miles into the side of a mountain before being
lowered some five miles into the ground.
“I told him that was too far in[side] there,” she said.
She suggested that he go back to teaching, a profession he entered
after college and walked away from in favor of the camaraderie and finan-
cial security mining offered. So close to retirement, she wanted him to
do something safer, something that could ease him into his golden years.
Deep down, she knew Rosie would never leave the mine. It’s what
kept him young. “He loved producing coal,” she says.
Historical records show that the earliest coal mining in America of
any commercial significance involved slaves working in the coal pits
in Virginia in the mid-1700s. During Reconstruction, the coal and
railroad industries became two primary employment opportunities for
the newly freed Blacks.
“Thousands of them toiled in the pits and shafts, both as slaves and
free men,”says Tim Pinnick, who has been researching Black coal
miners for some 20 years. His Web site (blackcoalminerheritage.net)
compiles information about Black coal miners that he says “is generally
contained in a myriad of documents, often unindexed and scattered in
many locations across the country.”
As early as 1860, documentation shows Black coal miners working
in northern mines near Pittsburgh. In 1913, a pick miner was paid
around 48 cents per ton of coal that he mined, averaging out to an
annual salary of about $700. Large mining companies often provided
housing for the miner and his family. By the 1930s, there were more
than 55,000 Black miners in the United States. But industrialization
cut into those numbers dramatically as machines made mining easier
and more profitable. By the 1960s, even more Blacks were forced out
as unionization resulted in increased wages and better benefits. There
are presently only a few thousand Black coal miners in the nation.
Today, coal mining in West Virginia is considered such a good job
that nepotism runs rampant within the industry. A miner who works
in a union-organized mine gets paid vacation, sick days, holiday pay,
full medical insurance and, depending on the company, a production
bonus, a safety bonus, clothing allowance and many more benefits.
Mining in the mountains is much like balling in the ’hood. Little
boys in West Virginia start dreaming early of the day when they turn
18, can drop out of school and get a good mining job. For many, it’s
their only ticket out of abject poverty. Appalachia poverty. The kind of
poverty that makes the ghetto look like the good life.
Connects, especially for Blacks, are a must to land a job.
Desire is also a must. It takes a special breed of person to travel into
the bowels of the earth—to places that no man has gone before—for
a paycheck. Coal mining is not a job someone stumbles into or learns
to love. Around these parts, you’re either one or you’re not. Locals like
tosay, “It’s in your blood.”
The Lynch family has mined coal for generations. Genny and Rosie’s
son, Mon Lynch, is a miner. So is Rosie’s brother Melvin Lynch. And
Genny’s father, Earl Sylvester Woodson, retired after 35 years of mining,
“You either make $4 or $5 an hour working in a restaurant or you make
a good living in the mines,” says Woodson, who struggles with black
lung disease, a type of cancer prevalent in coal miners.
For the Lynches, mining has given them a middle-class lifestyle
in a state with one of the highest levels of poverty in the nation. For
Rosie, it helped him put his two children through college. It also
allowed him to treat Genny like his princess.
A typical miner works nine hours a day, six days a week. After they
punch in, they take a shuttle car, called a “mantrip,” miles into the
mountain to their worksite. They don’t come out until their shift is
done. No natural light, only the light on their helmets. No communica-
tion with the outside world.
Down in the mine, it’s dark and cramped. Portable toilets have
replaced squatting in the corner (although many miners still prefer the
latter). There are bats the size of rats, and rats the size of cats to contend
with. A day in the coal mine is a constant struggle of endurance and
patience. Mental strength is a must.
Rosie knew the challenges and the risks. But he said that it was all a
part of the job. And besides, he had never had been injured in all his
years of mining. So he kept plugging away, moving from site to site as
new coal was discovered.
That all changed on April 5, 2010. Having put in a day’s work at
the Upper Big Branch mine, he was making his hour-long trek out of
the mine when a massive explosion sucked every bit of oxygen out of
the air, killing him and 28 other miners (including Jody Price, who was
Opening Spread | Suffering loss, Geneva Lynch continues to mourn the death of her husband, William Roosevelt “Rosie” Lynch, a coal miner who died on April 5 following
a massive explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine, one of the largest mining facilities in West Virginia.
Way of Life | For generations, Blacks in West Virginia have mined for a living. (Top, right) Retired coal miner Earl Sylvester Woodson (who suffers from black lung disease)
holds the hand of his grandson, Mon Lynch, a miner and son of deceased miner Lynch (bottom inset). Wife Geneva Lynch and daughter Miki Rogers, who gave birth to
a daughter 10 days after the fatal mine explosion, talk about Roosevelt’s life.
”
“we did everything together....
people would say that we were
like two old shoes. we were
just inseparable.

3. JULY 2010 l EBONY 9796 EBONY l JULY 2010
also Black). Genny later found out that Rosie was only seven minutes
from the exit; seven minutes from hopping into his car; seven minutes
from making his way back home to her.
The nation mourned. A large part of Genny died that day.
“He spoiled me,” she said as she sat down with EBONY in the living
room of their modest split-level home. For two hours—through laugh-
ter and tears—she talked about her husband. “I’m lost without him.”
Genny says that she doesn’t know how she’s going to make it. Time
will surely ease her pain. But for now, the memories are too fresh, the
love they shared too strong to let Rosie go.
Sometimes, love is indescribable. But when Genny starts to describe
her Rosie, it is undeniable. Here, in her own words, Genny shares her
memories of life as a coal miner’s wife:
He was six years older than I was.Buthesaidthathealwayshadacrush
on me. He followed me all around everywhere. He would just show up wher-
ever I was. I told my mama that I guessed I would have to marry him or else
he was going to follow me all over the world.
Hewasthetypewhowouldsearchtheworldoverfora[greeting]cardthat
would say exactly what he wanted to say. It had to be perfect. He would send
meflowers.Hewouldmakemetapesjustforme.Hewouldsitandgothrough
his albums and pick out songs just for me to play. He was a special person.
We did everything together. I’d cut the grass. He’d weed. He wouldn’t
let me weed. We cleaned house together. We exercised together. We
walked the track together. We cooked together. We watched TV together.
We were inseparable. People would say that we were like two old shoes.
We were just inseparable.
He was a meticulous man. Everything had to be in order. His clothes. He
wore what was in front of his closet. He didn’t deviate at all. Once he wore it,
it went in the back of the closet. It could be summer and if corduroys were
up, it was corduroys. We tried to change him. His CDs are [still] in A-B-C
order. Every bill was laid out. He kept every check that he ever wrote.
Everything in his drawers is folded. Everything is in order. I haven’t touched
anything. Not going to. Everything is how he left it.
I tried to get him to get out of the mines and start back teaching. But he
said that he loved what he was doing. He liked his crew. He thought that he
was too old to go back to teaching. I told him that they need people who
cared about the kids, not just a paycheck. But he liked mining.
He wouldn’t tell me anything about mining. He knew that I was a wor-
rywart. So when he would come home, he wouldn’t talk about it. The
only thing that he told me was that it took them an hour on the cart to
get to where they were working. I said, “What if something happened
[and] I couldn’t get in there to get you?” He said, “You couldn’t get in
there anyhow.” I said, “Yes, I could if I had to.”
He got up every morning at four o’clock. He had to be at work at six.
When that clock went off, he sat up like a jack-in-the-box. He’d turn
around, get off the bed, put his pants on, go in the kitchen and put his
lunch in his bucket. Before he left, he’d come back in the bedroom, he’d
kiss me three times, squeeze my kneecap, and he was gone. He would
never leave the house without kissing me. Three kisses meant, ‘I love you.’
One time when he was off, I left the house and didn’t kiss him. Do you
know that he came to my job [as an office manager for a medical billing
company] to get his three kisses? And the girls laughed because he
walked in behind me, spun my chair around and gave me three kisses. “I
come to get what you forgot to give me this morning,” he said. Then he
left and went back home. He was just that type of person.
He loved driving his shuttle car, and he loved producing coal. Their crew
was the best crew in [the mine]. They were all older men. They called them
“the old-man crew.” It was Roosevelt, Bennie, Peewee, Woodsie, Tim and
Head, who was the boss. They all loved working with each other. I remem-
bertheChristmasfunction.Theyallgottogetheranddidkaraoke.Theywere
singing “Elvira.” He was the biggest thing there, standing 6-feet, 21/2- inches.
They put a big cowboy hat on him. I looked at my sister-in-law and said,
“Please tell me they’re not going to sing.” But they did, and they won.
Ithinkminingkepthimyoung.Hewasalwaysanathlete.He’dshootyour
eyes out with his three-pointer.
He’s got a man cave. He’s a diehard Dallas Cowboys fan. He’s got Dallas
Cowboys everything in there. You couldn’t watch the Cowboys game with
him. He hollered. He screamed. He would bite you. He would squeeze you.
Youwouldbeallwornoutbythetimethegamewasover.Anddon’tsitbeside
him. You’d be all beaten up by the time the game was over. I was planning on
taking him to a Dallas game for his 60th birthday. People were like, “Why
don’t you throw him a surprise party?” I was like, “No, he wants to see Dallas
play.”Hewantedtogotothatnewstadium.HehadneverbeentoaCowboys
game. This would have been his first game. He kept telling me, “I’m going to
one of them games one day, Geneva.”
I kept saying in the back of my mind, “Yes, you are.” I never told him my
plans. I was going to wait until the start of the football season to tell him. We
were just going to pack up and go. He would have been so excited. You
couldn’t have told him nothing.
He had said that he was going to work nine more years until he paid off
the house. I always told him that when he decided he was ready to retire, we
could sell the house. We could get a Winnebago or something and just travel.
[When he was] ready to retire, [we should] just do it. He wouldn’t have been
satisfied not doing anything. He wasn’t that type of person.
He realized the danger every day. But it wasn’t something that he would
worry about. He wasn’t that type. He would always say, “Don’t worry about
something until there is something to worry about.” He tried to make me
like that. But I couldn’t be like that.
He would have never thought in his wildest dreams that something
would happen. He went about his job. Did the best he could. He was always
prepared. He always wore his safety glasses. He always had his rescuer on.
He did everything safety-wise that he was supposed to.
Hehadtouchedsomanylives.Thereweremorethan2,000peopleathis
funeral.Peoplesatoutsideforhourstogetintothechurch:formerstudents,
high school classmates. He was always doing things for people. He smiled
all the time. He was just a happy person.
Whathurtsmemostisthathenevergotachancetoseehisgranddaughter.
[Theirdaughter,MikiRogers,gavebirthtoGenevaRose10daysafterhisdeath.]
Hewaslookingforwardtohavinganewgrandbaby.
I’mveryangry.Ihaven’tcometorealizationyetthathe’sgone.Anexplosion
inamineis100percentpreventable.Somebodywasn’tdoing[hisorher]job.
Thereshouldneverbeanamountofmethanegas[present]thatgreattocre-
ate an explosion that large. I see it as if he was murdered. People have been
calling it an accident. An accident is something that can’t be prevented.
This could have been prevented. Rosie should be here right now. ■■
Go With The Flow | Life goes on as three generations of Lynches (l. to r.)—Mon, Melvin and Earl—take part in their weekly fishing expedition on the New River. Outdoor
sports are popular in the mountain towns of West Virginia.
Walking In Faith | Pamela Lynch, Melvin’s wife dances at church and her husband walks past memorial erected for his brother and the 28 other miners killed. Coal
can be seen along the mountainside behind the memorial.
For more Coal Miners, visit us at ebony.com