The Struggle to Stay Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

How to Put Coalfield Workers Back to Work

“Jobs aren’t a silver bullet,” says Coalfield Development Corporation CEO Brandon Dennison.

But they are a good start.

Dennison’s social enterprise has helped 100 percent of its first 30 graduates find employment or further their education. Now, it’s hoping to repeat that success with 50 employees.

Meanwhile, the larger goal is ambitious – to reinvent the Appalachian economy from the ground up, through sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, renovating buildings and restoring former mine lands.

These enterprises earn some money, raise more and receive some from government grants.

Dennison thinks this is a model for development throughout Appalachia. But it takes a lot of mentoring to help employees overcome childhood trauma and keep their jobs.

On the Front Porch, we ask if it can it become more than a pilot program.

Welcome to “The Front Porch,” where we tackle the tough issues facing Appalachia the same way you talk with your friends on the porch.

Hosts include WVPB Executive Director and recovering reporter Scott Finn and avid goat herder Rick Wilson, who works for the American Friends Service Committee.

An edited version of “The Front Porch” airs Fridays at 4:50 p.m. on West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s radio network, and the full version is available at wvpublic.org and as a podcast as well.

Share your opinions with us about these issues, and let us know what you’d like us to discuss in the future. Send a tweet to @radiofinn or @wvpublicnews, or e-mail Scott at sfinn @ wvpublic.org

The Front Porch is underwritten by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Charleston Gazette-Mail. Find the latest news, traffic and weather on its CGM App. Download it in your app store, and check out its website: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/

You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive – Derek Akal’s Struggle to Stay, Part One

Derek Akal, 22, grew up in the famed coalfields of Harlan County, Kentucky. He’s a bit over six feet tall, he’s black, and he has an athlete’s build. Neat curls of black hair rise off the top of his head, and on his chin, he keeps a closely-trimmed mustache and goatee.

I first interviewed Derek in October 2016. At that time, he said he was trying to become a Kentucky state trooper, but also making plans to move to Texas to work on an oil rig.

By November, Derek still had one plan to find work near home, and another plan to move West, but both plans had changed. Now, he was following a lead on a lineman job that would have him climbing utility poles and making plans to move to California after his birthday, in March.

Plans Through the Whole Alphabet

For Derek, changing plans is part of the plan. When I asked Derek what would be the first thing he’d want people to hear from him in this story, this is what he told me:

“It’s okay if you want to stay. It’s also okay if you want to leave. But if you’re going to leave, then make sure you always have more than three plans. Plan A, plan B, plan C— you’ve got to have through the whole alphabet!”

Derek has had a lots of ideas about what he could do at home, and he’s told me he would stay home if his mom or grandma asked him to, but the plans Derek has gotten most excited about all involve him moving somewhere far away.

“That’s where I might have a future. I know I’m young, but I’m ready to get out there and do a lot.”

Plan A: Football Dreams

Derek was raised primarily by his granddad, his grandma and his mom.

“Because his father wasn’t around. His grandfather was his father,” said his mother, Katina Akal.

When Derek was a junior in high school, his granddad passed away.

His grandma and his mom said they noticed that Derek became more withdrawn. He started to focus more intensely on a goal his granddad had pushed him toward— excelling at sports to hopefully earn a college scholarship.

You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive

His senior year, after a summer dedicated to working out, Derek became a football star. “I got defensive player of the year. I got four district championships, and I got three regional championships. You know, I dedicated all that [to] my granddad.”

Harlan County High School’s football field is called Coal Miner’s Memorial Stadium. It has huge metal bleachers on two sides, and a giant modern scoreboard behind the end zone. It’s in a beautiful spot, a patch of flat land that was blasted out of the wooded hillsides that surround it.

When Derek and I visited in November, the leaves were at their most colorful. A gym class was playing flag football, and the sound of gunshots told us someone was out hunting nearby.

Derek started to get nostalgic, remembering how he used to feel back when he played here as a Harlan County Black Bear. He told me about times his blood and tears fell onto the turf. He told me about walking onto the field before games, in front of a roaring crowd that would sing along to the country hit “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive.”

In the deep dark hills of Eastern Kentucky

That’s the place where I trace my bloodline

And it’s there I read on a hillside gravestone

You’ll never leave Harlan alive

“I’m not a big fan of country music,”Derek said, “but you know it got me pumped up like crazy. I love it.”

The last game of the season, Derek got hurt. Some of his teammates had the opponent’s running back held up, so Derek charged in to help make the tackle.

“As soon as I hit him, my head cocked all the way back, and I felt the back of my head touch my back. I broke my neck— I broke my C1 and my C2… If I hadn’t gotten hurt I’d be playing for a bowl game right now with a D1 college.”

Going Away to College

Derek was in a neck brace for four months, but he was still getting college scholarships to play more football. He accepted a scholarship to attend the University of the Cumberlands, in Williamsburg Kentucky. It’s only two hours from Derek’s home in Harlan County, but the college draws students from all across the country.

There, Derek sometimes felt like an outsider. In Williamsburg, he stood out for the way he talked— for his Harlan county accent.

Many of his classmates were surprised that someone who looks like him, a clean-cut and fashionably dressed black man, could be from rural Kentucky.

“They’d be like, ‘oh where [are] you from?

And I’d say, ‘Two hours away in the mountains.’

And first thing, they be like, ‘You serious? You don’t even look like you’re from Kentucky! You look like you’re from Georgia or Florida or New York City, city places like that.’

I’m sitting here like, ‘No man, I’m from Harlan County Kentucky!’”

That wasn’t the only discomfort Derek felt with being a young black man in Williamsburg. Derek said his feelings about the town soured after he and a friend had their car searched by police twice in one week.

“We gave [the police] the license and everything, and he was like, ‘oh, I thought you guys had stuff on y’all.’ I can’t read minds, but seeing a couple of black guys together, I feel like we got profiled right there.”

Things on the football field weren’t going great either. Two games into the season, Derek’s neck started bother him again. He became afraid that playing more football could make his spinal injury become more severe. “I didn’t want to play no more,” Derek said, “because, you know, I want to be able to walk.”

Derek was homesick, and he didn’t want to get deeper in student debt, so he decided to drop out and move back home.

What Now?

Derek’s mom says that when he got home, he was afraid that she and his grandma would be disappointed in him, but she understood where he was coming from. ” “I said,‘look, college is not for everybody. Do what you feel like you want to do.’”

“Go do something,” his grandma urged him. She said, she worries there aren’t jobs in Lynch; she would like him to get out if it means he can find work. “Go get yourself a job. I don’t want him to stick around here, walking these streets.”

Derek’s mother agrees. “I’d rather for him to go find work and be a productive member of society. I’d rather him do that than stay here and be miserable, because I can see it already. I want him to go somewhere that he can be happy.”

Derek’s mommas, as he calls them, instilled in him a drive to get out of Appalachia and find opportunity elsewhere. “I got it in my head that I can make it out, and be something for myself, by myself.”

Derek’s not the first person in his family to have that thought. In the next chapter of Derek Akal’s Struggle to Stay, we’re going to hear more about how the hunt for better work and a better life has affected Derek’s family and community for generations.

This story was produced by WMMT in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and the Ohio Valley ReSource, which is made possible with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Music in the audio version of this story was provided by Marisa Anderson. We’ll hear the next part of Derek Akal’s Struggle to Stay story next week, here on Inside Appalachia.

Back to Work- Dave Hathaway's Struggle to Stay, Part Three

For the past few weeks, we’ve been following the story of Dave Hathaway, a laid off miner from Greene County, Pennsylvania, as part of our series The Struggle to Stay.

Late in 2016, he got a job offer for a company that was doing blasting work. It was great money, and a steady day shift. But it was in Maryland. He’d have to spend four nights a week in a hotel, leaving Ashley to take care of newborn Deacon. “We agreed I pretty much had to do it,” he said. “I didn’t have any funds coming in.”

But just before he would start this job in Maryland, the Cumberland mine called. They offered him a job as a general inside laborer.

He accepted.

He wasn’t relishing going underground, and at age 38, he’d be doing the same job he did when he first started working in coal mines in his 20s. But this was how it had to be, for now.

Ashley saidys she knew coal mining could be a “scary job,” but she had grown up around it, and accepted the risks it carried.

“My dad and my uncles, they were all coal miners, so I’m kinda used to the fact that it happens,” she said. “I wished he could have found something else, but nothing compares to the pay. And the benefits. We were so lucky having our baby this year.”

Dave would be going back into a mine. There were a lot of questions. Would it be safe? Would the job last? But all those could wait. Dave was home, and he and Ashley could pay their bills. And that was all they could ask for, for now.

We’ll hear the conclusion to Dave Hathaway’s Struggle to Stay story next week.

Thanks to The Allegheny Front for that story. The Allegheny Front is produced out of Pittsburgh and reports on the environment. Music in the audio version of this story was provided by Marisa Anderson.

From Miner to 'Manny'- Dave Hathaway's Struggle to Stay, Part Two

In our series, The Struggle to Stay, we’ve been following six people as they try to find a way to support themselves here in Appalachia, or elsewhere if they decide to leave.

Dave Hathaway is a former coal miner in the very southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. Back in 2015, he lost his job. Now, he and his wife Ashley have a new baby. And the job hunt isn’t going so well.

His wife, Ashley Hathaway, works at the same coal company (it’s had several names, including Alpha Natural Resources; it’s now called ‘Contura’) out of college.

She said when she first started, it was a good place to work, but the mood dampened when the mine started laying people off.

“Just seeing people leaving in the way they did it, it just didn’t seem like the same place as when I started,” she said.

It was tough at home, too, when Dave got laid off.

“I mean, we’ve survived,” she said. “But having a new baby–it was a blessing–but it’s hard. You have to think about the baby now and you’re spending more money because of that.”

As a union coal miner, Hathaway made around $33 an hour at Emerald mine. The yearly take home is around $75,000 a year, and it can get up into six figures with enough overtime.

"I think for the man of the house to not have a job, it's pretty disheartening. It's a hit to my ego, really. Ashley's the breadwinner. It's cool she has a job, but I need to chip in."- Dave Hathaway

While he was looking for a job, Hathaway only saw offers for low wage, low benefit work, like part-time positions at a Home Depot or Lowe’s. He wouldn’t take a job like that because he worried it would cause him to lose the health benefits he was still entitled to for the first year after his layoff.

He tried to get into an apprenticeship program with a carpenters’ union, but was turned down.

By late fall 2016, Hathaway’s unemployment ran out.

He started to get worried. It wasn’t just the money. It was also the feeling he wasn’t providing for his family. He felt that as a man, making money was his responsibility.

“I think for the man of the house to not have a job, it’s pretty disheartening. It’s a hit to my ego, really,” he said. “Ashley’s the breadwinner. It’s cool she has a job, but I need to chip in.”

He held out hope that he’d be re-hired by his old company. He was still a member of the United Mine Workers of America, so he was put on a waiting list to be re-hired at the nearby Cumberland mine. But he had no idea when, or if, that would happen.

After a year of looking for work, he’d burned through his savings and was getting anxious.

Dave had been at Emerald Mine for eight years, and by the time the mine closed down, he had secured an above ground job operating heavy equipment. To him, being above ground was better. It was safer, and he thought it was a higher status job.

He had plenty of gory stories of people getting injured by rock falls or close calls he had as underground coal miner, including one time when he thought he’d get electrocuted by a faulty wire in a pool of standing water.

But getting back underground was looking like a better and better option.

As the year wore on, he saw his number on the waitlist for work at the Cumberland Mine get smaller and smaller. And so, feeding an infant on his knee, he kept putting in applications, and wondering if the Cumberland mine would call. And they did. But more on that next time on The Struggle to Stay.

Music in the audio version of this story was provided by Marisa Anderson.

'I Won't Move. I Love Greene County.' – Dave Hathaway's Struggle to Stay, Part One

Dave Hathaway is a coal miner in Greene County, in the very southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. Apart from a brief stint living in Colorado as a child, he’s lived his whole life there, and he’s never really thought much about leaving.

So, when he was laid off in late 2015, he figured he had to find a way to stay there.

The question of what will happen with coal miners and the communities that depend on them has become pointed in recent years, as thousands of mining jobs have been lost in Appalachia and around the country.

The case of Dave Hathaway shows how difficult it can be for miners to find work that can approximate the kind of earning power and stability coal brought them, while fulfilling one important requirement: being able to stay in the place you call home.

Hathaway spent a year looking for work. He put in hundreds of online applications, and tried unsuccessfully to join a union.

He only had one iron-clad rule in his job hunt: he wouldn’t leave Greene County. His family and his wife Ashley’s family are in the area; his son Grant, 11, lives there, too.

Grant lives with his mother nearby, but he has a room at his dad’s house in Waynesburg. It’s crowded with toys, video game paraphernalia, and Grant’s collection of 2,000 football cards, including the boy’s most prized possession–a Marcus Mariota rookie card.

Living in Greene County means Hathaway can take Grant turkey hunting, play cards with Grant, and go to his son’s wrestling meets, where Hathaway, a former wrestler, could call out holds and maneuvers from the side of the mat.

Dave Hathaway with his sons, Deacon and Grant. Hathaway had one iron-clad rule in his job hunt: he wouldn’t leave Greene County.

Steady Drain Out of Appalachia

Greene County has been the biggest coal-producing county east of the Mississippi for years. And Hathaway grew up in a coal mining family. His father, and his father’s father were coal miners.

“Pretty much everyone you knew was a coal miner. Everyone’s dad was a coal miner,” Hathaway says.

He eventually became a coal miner himself, taking a job at the Emerald Mine in Waynesburg, Pa. in 2007.

He at first was skeptical that he’d ever like it. But eventually, he thought of the job as the greatest in the world. He loved the camaraderie of working with his union “brothers”. The mine was a place to get paid well for doing hard work.

But then bad times came. Coal began to lose market share to natural gas. Coal production reached a 30-year low in 2015, and the number of U.S. coal miners fell from 90,000 in 2012 to 50,000 in 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And at the end of 2015, Hathaway lost his job, too. The Emerald mine closed.

Over the years, many have left Appalachia in search of work. The population in Greene County, like much of the Appalachian coal region, peaked in 1950, at 45,000, and since then it has slowly declined. Greene County is now home to just 37,000 people, and every year, that number gets lower and lower.

Ashley Hathaway gave birth to their son, Deacon, in August, 2016. After a few months, she went back to work, at the coal company’s purchasing department (the couple met at the mine), and Dave watched Deacon at home. He called himself the ‘manny’, and joked that he was a pro at changing diapers and feeding Deacon with a baby bottle.

Next week on The Struggle to Stay, we’ll see how Dave copes with being unemployed, and what he does to stay in Greene County.

Music in the audio version of this story was provided by Marisa Anderson.

Overcoming Childhood Trauma, Still Shining Her Light – Crystal Snyder’s Struggle to Stay, Conclusion

In our ongoing Struggle to Stay series, we’ve been following Crystal Snyder, who works at a job-training program called Refresh Appalachia. She’s learning how to grow squash and shiitake mushrooms, while also going to a community college, working on her associate’s degree in Applied Science.

Crystal is a single mom, and it hasn’t been easy to balance school, work and family responsibilities. She was even put on work probation after an unexcused absence at work. On top of this, she’d just found out that her 18-year-old son Aaron had dropped out of high school. When we last heard from her, she was preparing for a meeting with her supervisors. That’s where we pick back up with Crystal’s story.

Crystal was devastated when she was put on work probation this past August. Up till that point, work at Refresh Appalachia was going great.

Note: This story may not be suitable for young listeners. A kid-friendly version is below.

Her boss, Ben Gilmer, said she’s one of the hardest workers at their company.

“When she’s on the job site, it’s clear that everyone else kind of steps up their game to keep up with her. She sets the pace. Which I admire a lot.”

So it seemed out of character for her when she didn’t show up to work one day. Ben knew Crystal was volunteering for Bernie Sanders in Philadelphia at the Democratic National Convention, but he didn’t know she was staying an extra two days. Crystal sent an email the day she was scheduled to work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grtOuNrwhlI

They asked her to come to a special meeting to talk about why she didn’t give them a heads-up sooner. And, as it turned out, it was also a meeting for them to find out if she was ok. Because Ben could tell she was having a rough time.

"She's so strong and resilient, cause she's had to provide for herself, I think, her whole life, and protect others."- Ben Gilmer

“At the time I think I was trying to help her with some personal financial management, some other stuff. I think that was the nature of our conversation. There’s also a big role to play here. It all adds up to this force of change that she wants to be a part of.”

Crystal said the talk with Ben was helpful. Even though it didn’t fix everything, it felt like her bosses supported her and wanted to help. They took her off work probation, and helped her to plan a personal budget. She decided to cut some unnecessary purchases.

"Learning to stop the bad thoughts and not worry. Worry does so much harm, and no good. So, it kind of forced me to snap out of it and refocus on all the wonderful things in my life."- Crystal Snyder

She realized she spent $500 a month at restaurants and coffee shops. So she started cooking more, which helped.

And there was another positive change for Crystal. After all the squash had been replanted, she asked to be transferred from Cabell County to Lincoln County high school’s greenhouse. Even though it means a longer drive, the different location helped Crystal.

She likes working with the high school students and teaching them to grow food. And she gets to work with two people she’s grown to be close friends with, Colt and Caroline. (They joke that they’re the three C’s.)

They also started to grow shiitake mushrooms at the Lincoln County site — this is the type of farming Crystal is most passionate about. Then, in January 2017, the Refresh Appalachia crew went on a retreat. All of Crystal’s co-workers in Mingo, Lincoln and Cabell counties got together for a two-day meeting.

On the first day, everyone stood in front of their colleagues to talk about their life story. Crystal was the first one to talk. She said she told her co-workers about some really scary stuff that happened to her as a child, like the time when her family was robbed, when she was 8.

Crystal Snyder at the Refresh Appalachia work retreat in Logan County

“In second grade, we were robbed. My dad was selling cocaine at that point. And he had some shady friends and they knew he had a stash. And they kicked in the door. There were guns, and it was so scary. I just, I thought they were gonna kill my dad and kill us. My mom was just screaming, and we were all just screaming.”

"He touched my private parts. And I told my mom and dad. They said my dad beat the guy up, but to me that just was not enough, you know? Like, they didn't call the police because they were there for something that was illegal, so they couldn't really report it."

She also told her co-workers about an earlier trauma, when she was sexually molested by a friend of her father’s.

“When I was 5, we went to Florida to pick up some weed. I remember huge black garbage bags in the back of the trunk when we went down there. But when we went down there, his friend…touched…what do you say? I said he touched my monkey, is what I told my mom when we got back. But he touched my private parts. And I told my mom and dad. They said my dad beat the guy up, but to me that just was not enough, you know? Like, they didn’t call the police because they were there for something that was illegal so they couldn’t really report it.”

But perhaps the most difficult part of this memory, for Crystal, is the fact that her parents didn’t really talk with her to talk about the abuse. “Why didn’t we talk about this?”

Sharing these stories with her co-workers marked a turning point for Crystal. She hadn’t talked about these memories with many other people, especially not with a group of about 12 other people listening.

Her boss, Ben, said her story seemed to inspire the rest of her co-workers. “When Crystal leads from her heart like that, it allows other people to access that within themselves, in a different way. And I saw that. Each of us, including myself, shared in a different way because she started off that way.”

After the work retreat, Crystal started to focus more on how much she’s overcome in life. The experience also encouraged her to start seeing a therapist.

“Learning to stop the bad thoughts and not worry,” Crystal said. “Worry does so much harm, and no good. So, it kind of forced me to snap out of it and refocus on all the wonderful things in my life.”

She’s not worrying as much about politics, or climate change, or what direction the country is heading. Instead, she’s trying to spend more of her energy on making change here in West Virginia, and with her own family.

Mushroom farming workshop at Lincoln County high school that Crystal helped lead

“My therapist helped me realize, just do what you can, and Ben too, what you can locally. But when she would say that, I would be like, yeah, right. Like why does that matter, what I do locally, if ….globally we have no control? But really… it does. Or at least it makes me feel better.”

Ben said he’s seen Crystal grow a lot as a person, and as a farmer, over the past year and a half.

“She’s so strong and resilient, cause she’s had to provide for herself, I think, her whole life, and protect others.”

"I'm proud that I shine my light still maybe more so than maybe I would have if I hadn't of experienced darkness."- Crystal

One thing Ben said he’s continually blown away by is her ability to lead workshops in farming, and teach other farmers how to grow shiitake mushrooms. He said Crystal is a born educator.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up being a teacher you know, one day, but I’m not gonna project that on her. She’ll always be a teacher I guess no matter what she does. So, one step at a time, I know she’s focused on getting through school and doing good at Refresh [Appalachia].”

As Crystal continues to work for her goals, she takes pride in her ability to grow.

“I’m proud that I shine my light still maybe more so than maybe I would have if I hadn’t of experienced darkness. I’m a protector, and I love that about myself. I’m proud of my kids, their kindness. I’m proud to be in the field of agriculture, I’m proud to be on this journey. I don’t know where it’s going but it’s going somewhere good.”

This is where we leave Crystal, for now. A year and a half after I began helping her record her story, she’s now in her fourth semester at Mountwest Community College, and she’s loving school. Last semester, she got her first B, and she’s proud of that B. She’s aiming for an A this semester.

She also got a job promotion, and a raise, and was made a crew leader at Refresh Appalachia.

Her son, Aaron, is working on getting his Graduate Equivalency Degree, or GED. Like his mom, he said he wants to be a farmer. Crystal dreams of one day owning land, where she, Aaron and her daughter, Morgan, can have a farm together.

Music in the audio version of this story was provided by Marisa Anderson.