dummied

12 dead

At a glance

This entry was written on January 4, 2006.

The entry prior to this is entitled A Round of Applause for The Times.

The entry following this is entitled Paring Down.

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"Miracles happen in West Virginia and today we got one."
— Charlotte Weaver, wife of Jack Weaver, one of the men trapped in a coal mine in Tallmansville, W.Va., shortly after midnight on January 4, 2006.

I have wept twice in as many nights.

I wept while sitting in front of the television late Monday night after a fake punt and the sweetest football victory I have ever known.

I laid in bed and wept late Tuesday night after 12 families and an entire community were handed a sweeter joy ... only to have it ripped from their grasp and replaced by unimaginable horror and despair.

12 alive, they told all those families.

12 alive, the church bells rang.

12 alive, and the hymns rang forth through a West Virginia hollow.

12 dead, and all the singing stopped.

12 dead, and the wailing began.

12 dead, and all that's left is the weeping.

12 dead, and all that was left was the mourning.

I was born in West Virginia. I was raised, schooled, married and began my career in West Virginia. I am a West Virginian, no matter where I may live.

I know what it feels like to tread through unspoiled forest at daybreak or walk down coal-dusted gravel roads to find blackberries and ginseng. I know stretches of back roads lined with trees dusted black with coal dust flying off trucks bound for the Kanawha River and then on to power plants in Kentucky or elsewhere.

My great-grandfather was a coal miner. I grew up with his old headlamp and galvanized metal lunch pail in a permanent spot in our living room.

I know these families and miners ... not personally, but I know them in my heart. I know that area of the state, through Upshur and Lewis Counties—around towns like Weston, Buckhannon and the seldom-traveled roads that split off of U.S. Routes 119 and 33.

I know how a $50,000 salary working in the pitch-black heart of a mountain can look pretty good when its stacked up next to welfare, unemployment or, for the lucky ones, a $20,000 job at the grocery store or the gas station or wherever else is able to hire.

I know all of this, deep down in my heart. I'm a West Virginian, and these kind of things are with me always.

I know how the hollow gets dark and cold this time of year and how the air, at once sweet and clear, can close around a person. I know how the routines get familiar, how the risks become familiar, how there doesn't seem to be any other way out.

I feel so incredibly sad right now, with CNN droning in the background, blaring out the news from Chester to Bluefield.

I know a whole state is weeping right now for 12 miners, 12 families and miracles that never came.