ALERT (03/07/2024): Due to a lightning strike, WVPB TV will be off the air in the Bethany/Wheeling area until new parts arrive. Thank you for your patience.
Harpers Ferry is a historic West Virginia city and international tourist hub. But four years ago the national park and surrounding town were devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Home » Back to Work- Dave Hathaway's Struggle to Stay, Part Three
Published
Back to Work- Dave Hathaway's Struggle to Stay, Part Three
Listen
Share this Article
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.
New solar customers will get a reduced net metering credit starting next year. And Mon Power will be able to recover fuel costs from electricity customers over the next three years.
Coles and Theresa “Red” Terry have been fighting over the Mountain Valley Pipeline nearly since it was first proposed in 2014. The project connects natural gas terminals in Virginia and West Virginia with a 303-mile pipeline that stretches across some of Appalachia’s most rugged terrain. Almost immediately after construction began, protestors tried to block it by setting up and living in platforms in trees along the route.
Winners of the 2023 Virginias Associated Press Broadcasters Awards were announced March 23 at the Awards Luncheon and Annual Membership Meeting at The Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. WVPB brought home five first place awards and seven second place awards in eight different categories.