Dec. 6, 2005
By B. L. Dotson-Lewis
P.O.
Summersville, West Virginia
(B. L. Dotson-Lewis, author of Appalachia: Spirit Triumphant)

Fayette County Lung Association Offers Support

The Fayette County Black Lung Association is conducting a membership drive.

The Fayette County Black Lung Association meets on the 3rd Tuesday of each month at New River Health Center's Robinson Annex at Whipple, West Virginia. The association provides support to miners suffering from black lung disease and their families. A business meeting is conducted with reports on progress of black lung claims and any new information helpful to miners or widows pursuing claims for benefits.

The Fayette County Black Lung Association is one of the oldest chapters in West Virginia. I became a member last year to become better informed about the disease affecting miners in my community and Nicholas County; a county known for its coal mining industry. I learned that filing a black lung claim is often a complicated and grueling process. Miners tell me it is difficult to find lawyers willing to accept black lung cases because of the length of time involved and the mountain of paperwork involved. It can take years before a claim is finally settled. The Fayette County Black Lung Association tries to assist miners and widows struggling to get their claims approved. At one of our recent meeting, a member announced that he was awarded benefits after pursuing the claim for many years.

The Fayette County Black Lung Association offers support to miners, widows, and family members in many ways. The group recently reached out to Cannelton Hollow miners who lost their jobs as well as their benefits. The group visited the picket lines taking food and words of encouragement to the miners and their families. The group reports on members who are ill or in need of assistance. They attend rallies as a group and become active in legislative or political issues affecting miners or black lung laws.

On November 19, 2005, we had our holiday dinner. Members and guests brought covered dishes of homemade food and the association furnished the meat and drinks.

John Cline, a member of the association and an attorney, reported on the groups’ recent trip to Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. They traveled on the "Hope" Bus to view the artwork of former chapter president, Mike South. South, a coal miner, black lung activist and artist died on July 19, 2001 after a 20-year battle with black lung. He was 54. His widow, Kathryn South, told me they had to carry 20 tanks of oxygen in the back of their pickup truck in order for Mike to attend a black lung conference shortly before his death. South was from Beards Fork in Fayette County West Virginia. He served as the National Black Lung Association President from 1994 to 1999.

South's artwork was on display at Washington and Lee School of Law to celebrate the tenth anniversary of its black lung clinic. The law school established the black lung clinic in 1995 to train students in representing miners and widows with federal black lung cases. Currently, the clinic has 14 students. According to Cline, this collaboration between Washington and Lee University and black lung victims was the brainchild of Mike South. He first pitched the idea to West Virginia University Law School but was turned down. He went to Washington and Lee and the College Board voted to implement the program even though a prominent coal operator served on the College Board.

Black lung is a legal term describing man-made, occupational lung diseases that are contracted by prolong breathing of coal mine dust. Other names for the disease are miner's asthma and coal worker’s pneumoconiosis. It is all the same disease with the same symptoms and even though Congress passed the Coal Mine Health & Safety Act in 1969 to eradicate the disease, many miners are still afflicted with the disease. According to a former Coal Mine Health & Safety director and a presenter at the Rural Institute for Journalism Conference, “Covering Coal” I attended on November 18, 2005 in Charleston, West Virginia, miners at a younger age are showing signs of black lung due to slack enforcement of health standards.

Black lung disease symptoms include spitting, coughing, and breathlessness. Black lung victims' hardships or deaths seldom make front-page news because large numbers live in rural communities and suffer in silence, away from the spotlight. Their families are also victims of this terrible disease. Many times, as caretakers, family members stand by helplessly as they watch their love ones die a slow, painful death, grasping for one last breath.

It took the deaths of 78 miners at the Farmington, West Virginia, mine explosion on November 20, 1968, to awake the nation's attention to the terrible problem of dust in the mines and literally an Act of Congress to establish more stringent health and safety standards in and around coal mines. Three doctors, I. E. Buff, Donald Rasmussen, and Hawey A. Wells, Jr. from the coalfields of southern West Virginia, were instrumental in the formation of the Black Lung Association. Striking miners, approximately 40,000 from all over West Virginia also brought the issue to the nation's attention. Prior to the federal law, the West Virginia legislature passed a bill making coal workers' pneumoconiosis a compensable disease.

The Fayette County Black Lung Association's next meeting will be on January 17, 2006, at New River Health Center's Robinson Annex. Membership dues are $12.00 annually.