Published: August 27, 2008 04:13 pm            

Symposium: Coal industry mines a mineral but remains a people industry

Pete Lilly spoke about his good experiences and bad experiences in Bluefield when he addressed the people gathered at David’s at the Club Tuesday night after the conclusion of the first day of the two-day Bluefield Coal Symposium. His mother grew up in Bluefield, so it was good for him to visit family when he came to Bluefield as a young person. However, he played football for the Beckley Woodrow Wilson Flying Eagles, and he remembered getting hit hard by a Bluefield Beaver football player on a crack-back block when Woodrow came to Mitchell Stadium on his senior year.

I had not met Lilly before that night, although I was aware of his successful career in the coal industry where he now serves as president of the Consol Coal Group. He made an insightful presentation filled with his predictions for the coal industry through the balance of the decade. He seemed to captivate the audience of people who already understand the coal industry, but perhaps provided them with a better overview of the bigger picture.

When Lilly completed his remarks, I waited through a line of people to introduce myself to him. After years of covering coal industry stories, I think the people I write about usually appreciate knowing that their comments were being covered by a reporter and getting to know who that reporter is. It doesn’t actually help with getting any inside scoops, but it at least breaks the ice a little.

Lilly asked what paper I was with and I told him the Daily Telegraph. He paused briefly as though he was scanning his memory banks and said: “There was an older gentleman who worked with the Daily Telegraph who used to write about me as I was moving up through the ranks of the industry,” Lilly said. “I think my mother’s brother, Ray Dodson, used to tell him every time I was in town. Eddie Steele. It was Eddie Steele.”

I knew Eddie, but I was more interested to learn that Ray Dodson was his uncle. I wrote a feature article about Ray when I worked for the Observer. Ray was president of the Bank of Tazewell County at the time, and I was working on a story about banking. Ray’s bank was an older bank, and branch banking was a big thing back then. I remember sitting down with him in his office and talking together like friends instead of a banker talking with a reporter.

The thing that reminded me about that story was that Ray Dodson had also brought up Eddie Steele’s name to me at that time. I was able to tell Ray that Eddie and I were friends, and I told Pete Lilly the same thing Tuesday night.

Eddie Steele wrote about a time when the coal industry was truly king, and touched everyone’s life in most of the United States. A lot of people, even urbanites, heated their homes with coal.

Eddie Steele was born in 1908, and in his lifetime, the coal industry changed a great deal. In 2008, many people don’t have any direct contact with coal as consumers, although almost every household in America is touched by the energy that comes from coal-fueled power plants or the products made from coal.

Although it has a long way to go, the coal industry has done a great job of making people believe that energy comes from the light switch on the wall and not from the sweat and toil of coal miners who work every day to earn a living. The thing that Peter Lilly reminded me of was that the coal industry is a people industry as much as an energy industry.

As I was leaving one of the safety sessions during the first day of the symposium, I bumped into John Feddock, PE, senior vice president of Marshall Miller & Associates, and an expert on many modern mining techniques. I made a joke about seeing each other every two years, and he got serious with me and asked me about my health. We hadn’t seen each other since the Coal Symposium in 2006, but he recalled that I suffered a heart attack a couple of months before that event. He remembered that and wished me continued health.

That is what has always impressed me about the coal industry. Although it is a business that extracts minerals from the ground, it is a people business. During a quiet moment yesterday, Bill Reid, who chaired the symposium for the Greater Bluefield Chamber of Commerce, told me how proud he was to chair the symposium.

“People who say the coal industry doesn’t care about safety are simply wrong,” Reid told me. “The industry is not perfect, but we’re well on the way to zero harm.” Reid is himself a fifth generation coal miner who went underground for the first time when he was 9 years old.

Bill Archer is senior writer for the Daily Telegraph. Contact him at barcher@bdtonline.com.

        

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