MADISON, WV (WOWK) – An annual festival that honors West Virginia coal miners is celebrating its 30th year this week.
While the West Virginia Coal Festival is drawing in families for carnival rides, food vendors, live music and more, the meaning behind that festival is what families, especially those with a rich history of coal mining, are cherishing.
30 years of the West Virginia Coal Festival
“Coal miners are the salt of the earth,” said Delores Cook, one of the founders of the West Virginia Coal Festival.
Cook has seen the hard work, sweat and tears behind coal mining.
“My father was a coal miner, way back when,” Cook said.
She remembers being a little girl who waited for her dad to come home from long days at work every day.
“Daddies would leave a little something in their lunch bucket for their kids at home, even if it was half a biscuit,” Cook said. “I would always want to know what my daddy left for me.”
Her childhood memories of her father display a strong, hardworking man, she told 13 News.
“I can remember him coming home and it was so cold that he would breathe, there would be icicles on the front of his coat where he had walked three miles coming home,” she said.
Coal mining stayed in her family throughout her entire life.
“I married a coal miner. He worked in the mines 42 and a half years,” she said.
Cook said she always saw the grueling labor and strength required of men like her dad and her husband.
“I think so many times, we just take things for granted. Things are handed to us, and it is, I think it’s just so important to realize the struggle that these people went through to get us where we are now,” she said.
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After she and her husband lost her son to a fatal car accident in 1988, she decided she wanted to give back to her community even more. What hit home most for Cook was tying it all back to coal mining. That’s why she began the West Virginia Coal Festival.
“It’s important, and this coal is what has made Boone County. We don’t know the future. We hear pros and cons, but we do now it has kept the lights on for many years, during the war. Provided so much coal,” Cook said.
Thirty years later, Cook and other board members are relishing in the memories from the annual festivals, along with all the keepsakes within the Coal Heritage Museum in downtown Madison.
Madison Mayor James “Buddy” Hudson is the President of the West Virginia Coal Festival. He said Delores Cook is like a second mother to him for all her years of guidance and dedication to giving back to coal mining families.
“For coal miners coming into town and seeing the mining equipment in town, fathers love showing their children their livelihood, but then when I see the children on Main Street like last night in front of the concert stage, dancing, having fun and their daddies feeling proud because they helped put this festival on because if it wasn’t for their heritage, the coal festival wouldn’t be here. It’s good to see that the next generation is enjoying the activities and stuff their daddies helped create,” Hudson said.
Jim Clendenen, a former mine maintenance manager who specialized in mining equipment, echoed the same message about the importance of recognizing coal miners.
“They (miners) was coming from everywhere. And it is a reunion down where the equipment is for the coal miners. The reward is, this is the only place, and I’m going to say this really loud because it’s true, this is the only place where a coal miner can bring his family, his dad, his uncle, his kids and say ‘this is what I operate underground’ because that’s the only time they get to see it. This is the only place,” Clendenen said.