Passages: Larry Gibson, Keeper of the Mountains

 Mountaintop Removal  No Responses »
Sep 092012
 

September 19 Update: Oct. 14 event celebrating Larry Gibson

Public memorial scheduled for activist Larry Gibson

From September 9:  We are in shock, mourning the passing today of Keeper of the Mountains Larry Gibson. We are holding his wife, daughter and sons close to our hearts. Update: Read some of his daughter’s thoughts here: Prominent W.Va. environmental activist Gibson dead at 66.  Also see: Anti-mountaintop-removal activist Larry Gibson dies.

Larry Gibson was an OVEC board member for more than a decade. We have so many memories.  The Walk for  the Mountains… the tens of thousands of students he inspired… the first introduction to mountaintop removal for so many of us… the first national news story where Larry took Penny Loeb of  U.S. News and World Report up to Kayford… so much more…

Here’s a notice from Keeper of the Mountains:

Larry Gibson, long-time environmental activist, died of a heart attack Sunday, September 10, while working on Kayford Mountain, the family home in Raleigh County which he spent the last decades of his life protecting from the coal mining practice known as mountaintop removal.

Kayford was the site of Larry’s birth, the final resting place of 300 ancestors stretching back to the 18th century, and the site of Larry’s annual 4th of July festival celebrating life in the mountains. As part of his effort to preserve the mountains, Larry traveled across the country, to schools, churches and a wide range of public gatherings where he spread his simple gospel about the mountains:  “Love em or leave em; just don’t destroy em.”

A private funeral is planned, and Larry’s family has requested that persons wishing to express condolences make donations to Keeper of the Mountains Foundation, which Larry founded in 2004 to support mountain communities.  A public memorial service will be announced at a later time.  Larry is survived by his wife, Carol, two sons Cameron and Larry, Jr. and his daughter, Victoria.  He was sixty-six years old.

Photos: Larry  in action on Kayford Mountian, taken by Vivian Stockman.

Locks Sheared for The Mountains

 Mountaintop Removal  No Responses »
May 312012
 

Marilyn Mullins had a dream and then she acted on it.

Via Facebook, to call for an end to mountaintop removal, she organized a Memorial Day head-shaving event for women at the State Capitol. What a deeply personal sacrifice these beautiful women (and some men standing with them in solidarity) made on behalf of the mountains and people! Mullins said this act of protest was meant to symbolize all that has been sacrificed and forever lost by Appalachians fighting mountaintop removal — barren moonscapes instead of lush mountains, poisoned water, obliterated communities, and people stripped of their homes and health.

I read that ritual head-shaving, a fairly ancient ritual, is part of many religious traditions —Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jain and Hindu. In some religious traditions, head-shaving is an act of devotion or it symbolizes renunciation — renouncing the world for the love of God. In Hinduism, the underlying concept is that hair is a symbolic offering to the gods, representing a real sacrifice of beauty, and in return, those who shave their heads are given blessings in proportion to their sacrifice.

For more than a decade, so many have already sacrificed too much in their efforts to bring mountaintop removal to an end. For some women who led the efforts, like Judy Bonds or Laura Forman, it was the ultimate sacrifice. But neither of them was thinking about or focusing on their own well-being. One of my favorite quotes by Forman still is: “West Virginia is truly almost heaven. She has given so much to my life. How could I not try to help save her?”

At the Funeral for the Mountains in 2001, I remember hearing Bonds say that every mining law in West Virginia had been written in blood, a sad truth. Without dying miners and community members in our southern mountain communities, laws like Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) or the Mine Health Safety Act, would never have come about.

It seems most politicians are moved by either by hefty campaign contributions from the coal industry that insure their re-election or shame when a preventable disaster occurs during their term of office. The 125 lives lost, thousands of homes destroyed and lives disrupted because of the Buffalo Creek disaster shamed Congress into passing SMCRA. The 29 miners who died because of Massey Energy’s negligence and a lack of state and federal regulatory oversight at the Upper Big Branch mine in 2010 has prompted greater scrutiny of underground mines. Bonds, of course, was right; it took blood on the coal and ultimate sacrifice.

I, for one, believe that this self-less, spiritually powerful act of head-shaving has already had a positive impact on the struggle to end mountaintop removal. A news agency reported that the West Virginia Coal Association had no comment. Was that a calculated non-response or was the spokesperson just unable to come up with pithy sound bite?

You don’t have to shave your head to take action to end mountaintop removal. Write a letter to the editor. Sign up for our action alerts. Check back to this blog next week (the week of June 4, 2012) for actions you can take in solidarity with The Alliance for Appalachia’s End Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington.