[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 10]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 14413-14414]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             CELEBRATING THE CITY OF LYNCH'S 100TH BIRTHDAY

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. HAROLD ROGERS

                              of kentucky

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 13, 2017

  Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of the 
centennial birthday celebration of the City of Lynch on September 16, 
2017, a remarkable milestone for a historic coal mining camp in Harlan 
County, Kentucky. Include in the Record, an article published in the 
Lexington Herald Leader on February 24, 2017, which provides a detailed 
overview of our historic coal town in a story written by reporter Bill 
Estep entitled, It was the world's largest company coal town. As it 
turns 100, it fights to stay alive.
  In 1917, U.S. Steel purchased 19,000 acres of land in Harlan County 
at the base of Black Mountain, Kentucky's highest peak, to produce the 
coal needed to make steel during World War I. By the 1940s, Lynch, 
Kentucky was the ``largest company-owned coal town in the world,'' 
boasting unmatched water and sewer infrastructure in the area, a local 
hospital, schools, retail stores, recreational activities and a diverse 
workforce.
  While our storied coal town has suffered tremendous losses over the 
last century with the coal industry's decline, it hasn't terminated 
their pride for the City of Lynch. The citizens have honorably 
preserved the historic efforts of local workers and immigrants from 
more than 30 foreign countries who tirelessly worked miles underground, 
producing enough coal to power our nation for generations.
  Today, the City of Lynch is embracing its heritage and working to 
boost tourism to capture the historic treasures of this community that 
served as the epicenter of coal production 100 years ago. I applaud the 
local leaders and entrepreneurs who are reimagining the future of coal 
country and working to integrate this small, rural town into the 
digital economy.
  Mr. Speaker, our Appalachian heritage is uniquely defined by the 
sheer grit of the mountain people who are determined to not only 
survive, but thrive, in our small, rural American towns. I am proud to 
join the City of Lynch in celebrating its 100th birthday.

             [From Lexington Herald Leader, Feb. 24, 2017]

   It Was the World's Largest Company Coal Town. As It Turns 100, It 
                          Fights To Stay Alive

                            (By Bill Estep)

       Lynch.--The valley along Looney Creek in Harlan County was 
     a wooded wilderness in 1917 when U.S. Steel, hungry for coal 
     to make steel during World War I, bought 19,000 acres and set 
     about creating the largest company-owned coal town in the 
     world.
       The company built an entire town from scratch--hundreds of 
     houses, stores, schools, a hotel, a hospital, a baseball 
     field, a fire station, water and power plants and industrial 
     buildings, including a machine shop and the highest-capacity 
     coal tipple anywhere.
       Despite the buzz of work and grand intentions, some thought 
     the town would be a flash in the pan.
       The L&N Railroad refused to extend tracks to Lynch from 
     Benham, a coal town about a mile away, because officials felt 
     the town would die after the war when demand for steel went 
     down, according to one history by a U.S. Steel official.
       The company built its own tracks, and Lynch survived. The 
     town at the foot of Kentucky's highest peak, Black Mountain, 
     turns 100 this year.
       In that century, Lynch has mirrored the history of Eastern 
     Kentucky as coal jobs swung up and down and families moved 
     out to find work during hard times.
       More than half the coal jobs in Eastern Kentucky have 
     disappeared since a precipitous slide started in 2012. At the 
     end of 2016, there were fewer miners on the job in all of 
     Eastern Kentucky than there were at the U.S. Steel mines at 
     Lynch at their peak.
       The town's population has declined to less than 800 from a 
     peak of 10,000, and a third of the houses are vacant, 
     according to U.S. Census figures.
       Now, like the rest of the region, Lynch is looking for a 
     new way forward. Residents are trying to promote tourism and 
     small businesses to create jobs, and a study about the 
     possibility of merging with two nearby towns is underway.
       The challenges from an anemic economy and a declining tax 
     base are steep, but many in Lynch have a fierce pride in the 
     historic town and are determined to breathe new life into it.
       A committee of volunteers is working to schedule events 
     each month to mark the anniversary. On Jan. 1, local churches 
     rang their bells for 100 seconds, and in February, residents 
     put up red ribbons around town. The big event will be in 
     September, with plans for a car show, vendors, family games 
     and performances by several bands.
       Residents also have set up a Facebook page where they are 
     posting historic photos and trivia about the town's past.
       The hope is that the centennial will be a springboard for 
     efforts to keep Lynch from withering away.
       ``The city was built by coal but it can be maintained by 
     something else,'' said Rev. Ronnie Hampton, a retired mine 
     inspector who was the town's first black mayor. ``As long as 
     we've got breath, we won't give up.''
       Coal companies built hundreds of towns in Southern 
     Appalachia in the early 1900s. Many were thrown together with 
     cookie-cutter houses, poor sanitation and few amenities.
       Lynch, however, was considered a model town, with better-
     built houses of varying styles; health care better than that 
     available to most people in the region; recreation 
     opportunities that included lighted tennis courts, the 
     baseball field, a bowling alley and dances at the hotel 
     ballroom; paved streets; a sewage system; and a company 
     commissary that was reputed to be the best department store 
     in Eastern Kentucky, according to historians.
       Italian immigrants used sandstone quarried from the nearby 
     hills to build impressive public buildings.
       ``None of them rivaled Lynch,'' James B. Goode, a retired 
     community college professor who grew up in the neighboring 
     coal town of Benham and has studied the history of Lynch, 
     said of other coal towns.
       The thought was that keeping miners content would enhance 
     production and keep down problems.


                          'A lot of fun here'

       Lynch resident Irene Florek, who is 100, arrived in town 
     with her family when she was a few months old. Her father had 
     moved from a U.S. Steel coal town in West Virginia to work at 
     the new Lynch mines.
       Florek lived near the baseball field and remembers frequent 
     activities including games and parades. One local history 
     recounts that the company would close off the street to the 
     hotel when it snowed so kids could go sledding.
       ``It was a lot of fun here at that time,'' Florek said.
       The company history recounts milestones from Lynch's first 
     40 years, including a meningitis epidemic that hit the area 
     in early 1936. U.S. Steel banned church services and public 
     gatherings to try to limit the spread, and set up a temporary 
     hospital.
       Six of the 100 Lynch residents who got sick died, but the 
     death rate was 80 percent or more in nearby communities, 
     according to the company history, which attributed the 
     relatively few deaths in town to the good medical care from 
     company doctors.
       In the Depression, people relied on gardens to help get by 
     and the Red Cross gave out flour and other commodities, the 
     history said.
       Lynch was a classic melting pot of white people from the 
     region, black people from the South and immigrants of more 
     than 30 nationalities. In 1921, nearly 60 percent of the 
     outgoing mail was to Europe, according to one history.
       U.S. Steel recruited black workers from Alabama and other 
     Southern states who were looking for better work than 
     sharecropping, including some recruited from older mines in 
     the Birmingham area.
       The company also had recruiters at Ellis Island who used 
     ship manifests to identify European immigrants with mining 
     experience that they could hire, Goode said.
       The first load of coal left Lynch in November 1917. By June 
     of 1920, the Lynch mines employed 2,300 men and the 
     population of the town had already reached 5,350, according 
     to a company history.
       ``It was hustle and bustle here,'' said Mike O'Bradovich, a 
     first generation American whose father came to Lynch from 
     what became Yugoslavia and whose mother was from Germany.
       O'Bradovich followed his father into the mines, working 
     from 1974 to 2002.
       The sense of pride many in Lynch felt was rooted in 
     immigrants making their way in a new country, O'Bradovich 
     said.
       ``The pride started when these people were coming over, 
     becoming Americans,'' he said.
       Generations of black residents have maintained ties to 
     Lynch through the Eastern Kentucky Social Club, which has 
     chapters around the country and sponsors a Labor Day reunion 
     each year, and through a homecoming to Lynch each Memorial 
     Day.
       When a former city clerk was charged in 2009 with stealing 
     $137,000 from the city, leaving it strapped, the city council 
     appointed Hampton to steer the city through the crisis.
       Hampton sent letters to Eastern Kentucky Social Club 
     members and former residents seeking help, which brought in 
     thousands in donations.

[[Page 14414]]

       Lynch was segregated until the 1960s. Black and white 
     employees worked together in the mines, but black miners 
     could not move up to supervisory positions until winning a 
     lawsuit in the 1970s, and schools and entertainment were 
     segregated.
       There was racial violence directed at black residents in 
     the Appalachian coalfields, especially in the early days, but 
     there was a relatively high degree of harmony between the 
     races at a personal level, historian Ron Eller wrote in his 
     1982 book ``Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: 
     Industrialization of the American South 1880-1930.''
       Whites and blacks in the mines had to rely on each other 
     for their safety, and there were not major differences in pay 
     or living conditions for miners of different races, Eller 
     said.
       When the schools integrated in the mid-1960s, U.S. Steel 
     ``made it seamless,'' said Dwain Morrow, whose father, 
     William Morrow, retired after working 40 years for the 
     company.


                       `Virtual reign of terror'

       Labor relations were another matter.
       Harlan County had some of the most widely reported labor 
     clashes in the country between the world wars. Coal operators 
     used control over the county's economy and politicians to 
     beat back organizing efforts, evicting union members from 
     company houses, blacklisting them from getting jobs and 
     paying the salaries of sheriff's deputies who intimidated 
     miners.
       Lynch was not immune from the violence associated with 
     those struggles that cemented the nickname ``Bloody Harlan.''
       There were shootings in Lynch, including one fight at the 
     bathhouse in which two men died, Goode said.
       ``They didn't hesitate to resort to violence,'' he said of 
     the union organizers and the coal companies.
       U.S. Steel and other coal companies exerted authoritarian 
     control over employees and the economic, political and social 
     life in the county, John W. Hevener said in his 1978 account 
     of the labor battles of the 1930s, ``Which Side Are You On?''
       When the United Mine Workers of America tried in 1935 to 
     sign up members at U.S. Coal and Coke, the U.S. Steel 
     division that operated Lynch, the company laid in a supply of 
     tear gas and extra ammunition, barred organizers and followed 
     union members and destroyed their literature, Hevener wrote.
       A state commission later said that a ``virtual reign of 
     terror'' existed in the county, financed by coal operators in 
     collusion with public officials, and that miners had been 
     evicted, beaten and mistreated.
       Goode said U.S. Steel eventually accepted the UMW at Lynch 
     in the late 1930s, deciding that the cost wouldn't be 
     onerous.
       Pay and benefits for miners improved under the union, said 
     William Morrow, 94, who lied about his age to go to work for 
     U.S. Steel at 16.
       ``It made it better,'' Morrow said.
       By the late 1950s, mechanization had eliminated many 
     miners' jobs and railroads and factories switched to other 
     fuel sources, reducing demand for coal.
       Coal production hit a 50-year-low in Harlan County in 1960, 
     and the county's population dropped by nearly half between 
     1950 and 1970 as people left to find work, according to 
     Census figures.
       U.S. Steel and other companies, including International 
     Harvester at neighboring Benham, decided it was too costly to 
     maintain company-owned towns. They tore down many houses, 
     sold others to residents, turned over schools to county 
     districts and gave offices and other buildings to the towns, 
     keeping only their mining operations.
       U.S. Steel eventually ended its involvement in Lynch after 
     more than six decades, selling its mines to Arch Coal in 
     1984.
       These days, the city is living month to month financially 
     and operates in the red at times, said Mayor John Adams.
       ``Getting by--that would be optimistic,'' Adams said.
       Arch stopped mining around town in the late 1980s, cutting 
     a key source of revenue for the city from selling water to 
     the mines.
       Adams said the city needs more employees but can't afford 
     to hire. When both of its water-plant operators quit in 
     January, the mayor pressed his sons into service to keep the 
     plant going.


                           Untapped potential

       But residents say Lynch also has assets to develop its 
     tourism economy, including the beauty of the mountains, a 
     fascinating history and its coal-camp houses and buildings.
       Some of the original buildings in town are still in use, 
     such as the hospital and a building that was a bank and post 
     office, which now holds City Hall.
       Kitty Dougoud, administrator of the Kentucky Main Street 
     Program at the Kentucky Heritage Council, said she was not 
     aware of a more intact coal town.
       ``The potential is there,'' Dougoud said.
       Neighboring Benham is home to the Kentucky Coal Museum in 
     the renovated coal-company commissary and other historic 
     buildings, including the School House Inn, which was a high 
     school for decades beginning in the 1920s but was converted 
     to a hotel.
       Cumberland, Benham and Lynch have been designated as trail 
     towns. They are working to develop hiking and horse trails, 
     and Lynch has started work on a campground.
       The city received a grant to renovate the old coal-camp 
     fire station, which now houses Fire House Gifts and Crafts, 
     and a Christian service organization called Meridzo Center 
     Ministries financed the renovation of a building that housed 
     a popular restaurant in the 1920s across from the portal of a 
     mine in the center of town. The Lamp House Coffee shop is in 
     the building now.
       There has been interest for years in restoring more of the 
     town's old stone buildings, but not enough money to match the 
     interest.
       The town did receive financing to create a unique 
     attraction at the Portal 31 exhibition mine. Visitors tour a 
     restored section of an underground mine where workers 
     produced more than 100 million tons of coal from 1917 to the 
     early 1960s.
       Recordings and animatronic displays tell the story of 
     mining and the town over decades, covering technology, safety 
     concerns, union organizing, and the rise and fall of Lynch.


                         `Here to help people'

       Residents say Meridzo also is a key resource for the town.
       In addition to renovating the building for the coffee shop, 
     the ministry operates a convenience store, a gym, a 
     veterinary clinic, retreat centers and a stable in Harlan and 
     Letcher counties.
       Meridzo sees its mission as helping people with practical 
     needs, including jobs, and in the process share the Gospel of 
     Christ, said Lonnie Riley, who founded the ministry with his 
     wife, Belinda, in 1999.
       ``We're here to help people,'' Riley said.
       Meridzo is working to recruit a chiropractor, and has 
     started a facility to grow shiitake mushrooms in sections of 
     hardwood logs in the old bathhouse where miners cleaned up 
     before going home.
       There also is an effort underway to develop a customer-
     service center to provide jobs locally.
       Betsy Shirey, who is developing the project, said her idea 
     is a center where employees would field telephone calls and 
     emails for other companies, and could provide other services, 
     such as bookkeeping and marketing.
       Shirey works for Humana, but after visiting Lynch on 
     mission trips coordinated by Meridzo, she felt a spiritual 
     calling to try to bring jobs to the area.
       She can do her job from home, so she bought a house in 
     Lynch and moved from Louisville.
       Shirey said the lack of jobs in the area has helped create 
     an attitude of entrenched hopelessness for many people.
       ``We've got to build up some infrastructure of meaningful 
     work for people,'' Shirey said.


                             Merger ahead?

       Some think merging services for Lynch, Benham and 
     Cumberland--or even merging local governments--would put all 
     three on better footing.
       The three lie end to end over a space of a few miles and 
     have been known as the Tri-Cities for decades, but grew up as 
     distinct places, with their own schools and competing sports 
     teams, and have always maintained separate city services.
       With all three stretched thin, however, their councils 
     agreed to a merger study proposed by the Tri-City Chamber of 
     Commerce, which said in its application for a grant that with 
     declining populations and tax bases, the three towns ``have 
     struggled mightily in their efforts to maintain basic 
     services to their citizens.''
       The study will focus on how the towns could form one 
     government, how services could be combined, potential savings 
     and how layoffs would be handled if needed.
       W. Bruce Ayers, former president of Southeast Community and 
     Technical College in Cumberland and head of the chamber, said 
     many members believe merger is needed.
       A merger would reduce costs, increase efficiency and give 
     the unified city a better shot at government grants, Ayers 
     said.
       ``I really fear for their existence unless they are willing 
     to come together and work as one,'' Ayers said.
       It will probably be next year before the study is done and 
     the towns have to decide on merging.
       Even if they do, Lynch won't lose its identity in its 
     second century, said Mary Jo O'Bradovich, who with her 
     husband Mike is involved in the centennial committee.
       ``After 100 years, I don't think anyone is going to say, `I 
     am from the Tri-Cities,''' she said. ``Lynch will be Lynch.''

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