Powers Preserved History of Coal

Powers lived - and preserved - coal companies' history
By JEFF LESTER, Senior Writer November 16, 2004

Beecher Powers and his family have lived the history of Stonega Coke & Coal Co. and Westmoreland Coal Co. (Ida Holyfield photo) Powers points out a museum photograph of a 1920s miner lifting a chunk of coal in a Stonega Coke & Coal Co. mine. (Ida Holyfield photo

BIG STONE GAP - Beecher Powers has a special appreciation for a recently published book that details the history of Stonega Coke & Coal Co. and Westmoreland Coal Co. in Southwest Virginia. After all, Powers lived that history for more than seven decades, from his early childhood to the end of his career. Powers has recently decided to retire after 17 years as curator of the Harry W. Meador Jr. Coal Museum, which holds a collection of Stonega and Westmoreland artifacts dating from the 1890s through the 1980s. Before he took over the museum, Powers worked 35 years for Stonega and Westmoreland. And before that, Powers' father worked in Stonega's Derby mines from 1927 until their shutdown in the 1950s. Powers played host at the museum in 2001, with Philadelphia journalist Dan Rottenberg, during a reunion between retired Westmoreland CEO Ted Leisenring Jr. and some of the miners Leisenring knew during the early days of his career, working underground in the early 50s. Rottenberg's recently published book, "In the Kingdom of Coal," traces five generations, nearly 200 years, of Leisenring family involvement in the coal industry - from eastern and western Pennsylvania, to Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, and finally to the surface mines of the Powder River Basin in the western United States.
"It's a good history book," Powers said in an interview last week. "I learned a lot about the early history, how they started (the companies)."

Rottenberg explains how Stonega and Westmoreland - which had joint management since 1929 and merged in 1964 - earned a reputation for taking good care of their employees, more so than many other companies.

"They were the best, as far as I was concerned," said Powers. "When the miners went on strike, (the company) would give people enough money to live on, and you'd pay it back when you went back to work. Not many people would do that."

Powers also remembers being one of roughly 5,000 children who, up to the mid-1930s, would get a "Christmas poke" from Stonega - a sack filled with a jacket, a leather hat, a toy and food.

A MINING FAMILY

Powers was born in Russell County, but his family moved to the Derby coal camp in the 1920s.

He was 10 years old when his father, John Powers, played a role in a now-legendary 1934 mine disaster that could have turned much worse if not for quick action by mine superintendent Brownie Polly, Powers and others.

Rottenberg writes that 91 miners descended into Stonega's Derby No. 3 mine on the morning of Aug. 6, 1934. It had been idle for a day because of a faulty ventilation blower.

Soon, a gas and dust explosion ripped through the mine. It killed 17 miners, injured three and trapped dozens more underground.

Polly - the father of retired Big Stone Gap dentist Brownie Polly Jr. and current Town Manager George Polly - was in the mine office when he heard the blast. He rushed to another mine opening, set up two electric blowers to help reduce gas fumes inside the mine, and began leading trapped miners through the undamaged section to safety.

If they hadn't been rescued sooner, those miners not killed in the explosion would have choked to death, Beecher Powers believes.

Under normal circumstances, he said, his father would have been among the men entering No. 3 that day. The explosion came from John Powers' work area.

Instead, Powers and several other men were busy that morning preparing the entry for the new Derby No. 4 mine.

After the explosion, Powers and two other men answered the call for volunteers with experience using self-contained breathing devices.

Beecher Powers remembers his father ordering him to "get in the yard and stay there." Then John Powers and the other men rushed off to help Polly.

Years later, Powers said, his father wouldn't talk much about that day. "He helped get most of them out, and that's about all he'd say about it."

POWERS' CAREER

Beecher Powers went to work part time for Stonega in 1942 while finishing his high school education. "I worked at the Derby tipple, picking slate," he said.

Modern coal-washing equipment wasn't in use yet, and boys would hand-pick slate out of the mix until the coal was 98 percent pure, he said.

But soon, Powers joined the war effort, spending four years in the naval air corps and two years sailing the world as a merchant seaman.

He returned after World War II to become an underground miner. He joined the United Mine Workers of America and mined for five years.

Then, he qualified to become a mine foreman. He left the union and worked in supervision for the next 30 years.

Powers was a superintendent at the Derby, Prescott, Arno, Wentz and Osaka mines. Then he became a general mine foreman at Pine Branch, and finished his mining career in 1985 in the construction department at Pierrepont Mine.

Local mine histories typically state that in the early days of the coal camps, miners were paid entirely in company scrip instead of cash, requiring them to buy household goods from the company store.

But that's a myth, according to Powers. In his experience, miners got paid in cash two weeks behind, he said. If they needed to buy something before they got paid, they requested a pay advance, issued to them in scrip. They then purchased what they needed with the scrip, and the debt was taken from their cash pay the next payday.

In the early days, before the union took over maintenance of miners' health benefits, Stonega maintained its own hospital at the Stonega camp, Powers said. Every mine had its own doctor.

He displayed a miner's pay stub in the museum collection, showing how 85 cents was deducted from his pay every two weeks to cover all his family's medical bills. "And the doctors made house calls," he said.

It's also a myth that most mines had little mechanization before Joy Manufacturing and Lee-Norse began selling the precursors to today's fast-moving, high-volume continuous mining machines, according to Powers. Stonega mines occasionally used cutting machines as early as the 1920s.

Powers was there when Stonega began using roof bolts to stabilize the "top," or roof, of underground mines. He removed the timbers previously used for support.

Of the mines he worked in, Prescott had the most unstable top, according to Powers, and Wentz was the gassiest mine, though it was also the easiest coal to work. Derby had the lowest coal seams, with miners often working on their knees all day in 3-foot-coal.

The hardest job of all was hand-loading coal on your knees, Powers said. He remembers being handed a No. 4 Red Edge shovel early in his career to load loose chunks of coal.

Miners would pack a dinner bucket containing sandwiches, cake, candy and water, Powers said. When the men "doubled back," or worked an overtime shift, someone would make a food run to Bessie's Diner or Frazier's store to get food for the miners.

Powers didn't know Ted Leisenring Jr. when Leisenring started mining in Derby around 1950, but recalls seeing him around. "He was on second shift. I was on day shift. He was just another miner."

Powers also spent time at Stonega's Glenbrook mine in Harlan County, Ky., where, according to Rottenberg, Leisenring first encountered militant UMWA members.

Rottenberg writes about cousins Jack and Wilmore Deaton, who controlled union activity at Glenbrook in the late 1940s and parts of the 50s. The Deatons were notorious for harassing fellow miners and terrorizing supervisors, until Leisenring helped convince UMWA president John L. Lewis to transfer them to the midwest.

"Jack Deaton ran the mine," Powers said. "They would strike whenever he called one. He'd tell them how much coal to put out each day . . . The mine finally shut down because they couldn't fill their orders."

Powers helped build coke ovens at Pine Branch in the late 50s. "They had 400-pound doors. It took one and one-half tons of coal to make one ton of coke. A machine would load it in one side, it would burn for 48 hours, and another machine would take it out the other side."

He also worked on the Stonega and Westmoreland first aid teams for several years, beginning in the early 50s.

Powers acknowledged he got hurt a couple of times himself in rock falls. "I broke my leg at Derby in the early 50s," he said. The rock was "not too big," he said with a grin. "Just enough to break my leg."

Powers also broke new ground in 1977 by hiring Westmoreland's first woman miner, at Arno. "Most of the men resented her, but some tried to help her," he said.

Powers had been retired from Westmoreland for 10 years when the company, mired in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, shut down its Big Stone Gap-headquartered Virginia operations in 1995 and laid off its last 650 local employees.

He knew it was coming. Powers agrees with Rottenberg's assertion that overwhelming obligations to pay retired union miners' health benefits left Westmoreland no choice but to pull out. "They couldn't mine enough coal to pay for it."

Big Stone Gap has survived, but the town isn't the same, he believes. "I knew it would hurt the town. A lot of people had to leave. The town is not as good as it used to be."

©Coalfield.com 2004

Powers retires from coal museum after 17 years
By JEFF LESTER, Senior Writer November 16, 2004

BIG STONE GAP - Beecher Powers says it's time for someone else to became the keeper of Westmoreland Coal Co. and Stonega Coke & Coal Co.'s historical artifacts. Powers has decided to retire as curator of the Harry W. Meador Jr. Coal Museum. Powers worked for Stonega and Westmoreland 35 years before retiring in 1985. By then, he said, his wife Mary was in poor health. "She decided I needed something to do," he said, and in 1987 he agreed to go to work for the town running the museum. She died the same year, after 39 years of marriage. The facility was dedicated in September 1982 in memory of Harry Meador Jr., who was president of eastern coal development for Westmoreland when he died the previous year. Meador began his coal industry career in 1949 as a miner belonging to the United Mine Workers of America - a union strongly disliked by his father, Stonega general manager Harry Meador. One year later, the elder Meador reluctantly relented when his boss's son, fledgling mine engineer Ted Leisenring Jr., also asked to become a miner and join the union.

Thirty-three years later, Leisenring - now the CEO of Westmoreland - returned to Big Stone Gap to help dedicate the museum. Leisenring said: "I think Harry Meador would like best to be remembered as a coal miner, with every proud attribute that goes with that nature."

Powers worked in practically every one of Stonega and Westmoreland's Southwest Virginia mines, mostly as a foreman. He brought firsthand knowledge of their operations to his role in explaining the hundreds of museum photos and artifacts to visitors.

Many of those who have toured the museum over the years are former residents who moved away from the local coal camps in the 1950s and came back to visit, Powers said. "They appreciate it most of all."

Powers has also gotten a kick out of watching young school kids tour the museum. They're fascinated by everything, he said.

Visitation to the museum has declined in the last several years, though its holdings continue to grow. Westmoreland donated numerous artifacts - including mining machines, miner's hand tools, office equipment, maps and photos - but private citizens continue to loan their own items, Powers said.

Powers decided this year to retire after his granddaughter Rebecca Osborne encouraged him to move in with her at her home near Lebanon. It will be good to return to his childhood home of Russell County, he said.

Big Stone Gap's parks and recreation department is in charge of the museum. Department director Donna Mahan said the town will hold a retirement ceremony for Powers in the next few weeks.

The End


Beecher Powers and his family have lived the history of Stonega Coke & Coal Co. and Westmoreland Coal Co. (Ida Holyfield photo)	Powers points out a museum photograph of a 1920s miner lifting a chunk of coal in a Stonega Coke & Coal Co. mine. (Ida Holyfield photo