Coal operator W. P. Tams died on August 3, 1977, at age 94. Tams studied engineering at Virginia Tech before going to work in 1904 for coal operator Sam Dixon in the southern West Virginia coalfields. Four years later, Tams launched his own company, known as Gulf Smokeless Coal in the new Winding Gulf Coalfield. He founded the Raleigh County town of Tams as his company’s headquarters and later acquired another coal operation in neighboring Wyoming County.

Nearly 1 million renter households across the Ohio Valley are unable to pay rent and at risk of eviction, according to research firm Stout. That amounts to 42 percent of renter households in Kentucky, 46 percent in Ohio and 47 percent in West Virginia.

One could spend a lifetime learning about Appalachia, and just scratch the surface. 

On this week’s episode of Inside Appalachia, we’re listening back to a show we originally aired earlier this year, before the pandemic changed so much of our lives. While some of the stories take place before social distancing, before we had to limit our contact with big crowds, the heart of this episode remains true to our current situation.

We’ll hear stories spanning from fiddle music, to Appalachian style food. We’ll also hear how moonshine getaway cars turned into an Appalachian subculture of families who rebuild and race hot rods.

Appalachian writers produce a tremendous amount of work, but finding it isn’t always easy. Katherine Ledford and Theresa Lloyd, professors of Appalachian literature at Appalachian State University and East Tennessee State University respectively, decided to create an anthology they could use in their classrooms. 

The effort took more than a decade, but it is finally available in the form of the 745 page “Writing Appalachia Anthology” from the University Press of Kentucky.

Aviation has played a role in Appalachia’s history through revolutionizing travel in the mid-1900s, supporting the coal industry and creating thousands of pilots.

As part of an upcoming aviation-themed Inside Appalachia episode, listeners shared with the team about their first or favorite flight memory.

On this West Virginia Morning, we remember flying over Appalachia with an audio postcard featuring voices of aviators from the region. Also, in this show, we hear a conversation with Appalachian Literature professors Katherine Ledford and Theresa Lloyd, and we listen to this week’s Mountain Stage Song of the Week.

  Labor leader Bill Blizzard died on July 31, 1958, at age 65. The Kanawha County native was the son of two passionate union activists.