William S. Holland: father, brother, husband, businessman, builder, factory worker, state employee, schoolboy, soldier, honored veteran of WWII and friend to thousands. This is the story of his life, full of love and loss, from his small upbringing as the son of an Ohio coal miner to the distinguished family man and community leader he is today. Follow his journey through his words in this truly American tale.
It's an America that doesn't exist anymore – one where men made their living in the darkest recesses of the Earth while their wives worked in the home from sunup to sundown and children helped with the chores from the time they could walk. But growing up as a coal miner's son wasn't all work and no play, as C. Don writes in Memories of a Coal Miner's Son, My Grandpa, My Dad, and Me, his poignant yet light-hearted memoir of growing up in the hills of eastern Tennessee in the 1940s and 1950s. Byrd, a retired insurance executive, decided to record his memories so his children and grandchildren could learn more of their family history – while also gaining awareness of the hard-working men and women who shaped the Byrd family. Some of Byrd's stories have been excerpted in Tennessee Ancestors and in the Des Moines Register. You don't have to be Southerner or a miner's descendant to enjoy Memories of a Coal Miner's Son. You just need to remember a time when people put in a good day's work, feared the Lord, and maybe broke away for a little fishin' on a Sunday afternoon.
Caught up in a web of treachery and deceit, George grows up believing his mother sold him. He's determined to make her pay, but at what cost? Is he strong enough to rebel? Will George ever learn to forgive?
William S. Holland: father, brother, husband, businessman, builder, factory worker, state employee, schoolboy, soldier, honored veteran of WWII and friend to thousands. This is the story of his life, full of love and loss, from his small upbringing as the son of an Ohio coal miner to the distinguished family man and community leader he is today. Follow his journey through his words in this truly American tale.
Robert Thompson Robinson Jr. grew up in a coal mining town. His father mined tungsten and coal, and was working in the Columbine Mine at the time of the massacre in 1927. This book is edited from video interviews Robert Thompson Robinson gave to his son in 1993. The editor did not polish his words, beyond editing out the inevitable repetitions that occur in speech. Here are stories of the broken cherry tree and the cigarette in the chicken house, of the Columbine Mine Massacre and the murder in the street in front of the bar, of the Highlander Boys and the big bands. This book gives a first-hand look at life in a small coal-mining town in the 1920s.
I was born in 1935 in a coal mining camp in Bibb County, Alabama, called Piper-Coleanor, back when the company doctor (W. E. Stinson) would come to your house and deliver your child for $15. That was during the Depression, and then came World War II. Most everyone was in poverty with no government programs. Later on, the government would give us limited rice, cheese, and beans to have something to eat. The hard times as youngsters gave us more ambition to come out of poverty as we got older. I am eighty-five years old and working five to six days a week. I have been a security guard at Mercedes Benz for eleven years and ten months, and I have only missed two days. We have eighty guards, and they say I am the most dependable guard they have.
William Bill Spencer Miller takes us on his journey of expansion and personal growth through his varied experiences as a farm boy in Brown County, Indiana to a Foreign Service Reserve Officer with the Peace Corps, a volunteer in Indonesia and Thailand, a Peace Corps director in the Kingdom of Tonga, and the Philippines. He went from attending a one-room school in Beanblossom, Indiana to Franklin College, to Eastern Illinois University where earned degrees in Biology, Kinesiology, and Sports, giving him a solid foundation to make his dreams come true. We learn about living in cultures different from our own as he shares his interactions living with and teaching the people of Indonesia and Thailand. Bill, always active, shares stories of playing basketball at the height of Hoosier Mania. His life-long love of running culminated in his participating in several triathlons, until a serious illness took him down, but not out of a productive life. He tells us of returning to the United States after ten years abroad and building a new life in Brown County with his wife and young family. We will learn about his new career paths and his work on the Deam Wilderness Project and his fight for landowners private property rights. Bill Millers experiences give voice to a life that has spanned (so far) a world that was still recovering from the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, the assassinations of prominent leaders in our country, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, to our present day struggles around the globe.
