The Dehue Reunion

Tomorrow I will go with Mom and Dad on our annual trip to the Dehue reunion.

Dehue (pronounced DEE’- hue) no longer actually exists. At one time it was a bustling Coal Camp along the waters of Rum Creek in Logan County, WV; home to hundreds of families. Larger two story frame houses where many of the bosses lived lined both sides of the railroad track in “the bottom”. That’s where the baseball diamond and the larger buildings that housed the school, company store, barber shop, community church, clubhouse, etc stood. Smaller, identically designed company houses stretched for what seemed to be a couple of miles up the hollow on both sides of the narrow road. Looming over the main part of the community was the huge rusting coal tipple where the newly mined coal was processed, cleaned, and loaded into the hopper cars queued up along the C&O railroad tracks. Here is an iteresting website with some photos of Dehue and some of my family members. http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge/4478/era.htm

Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company owned the Dehue mine back in the 1950’s where my father and his father were employed. I suppose that most of the “black gold” dug from the pits of Dehue was used in the steel mills of that northern Ohio city. As with other mining communities in the coal fields of southern West Virginia, the coal companies owned everything. Everything! They owned the company store, the theater, the barbershop, and all of the houses where the workers lived. The company employed the local doctor and housed his office. In fact, in those days the coal company even had their own “money”. The miners were paid in something called “scrip” which could be used for full face value at any of the company owned businesses in the community. If, however, the miner or his family wished to do business in the nearby towns of Logan or Man, they would have to cash in the scrip for real money. The catch was that if you cashed it in to use outside the company owned monopoly businesses, you didn’t get full value in dollars.

The coal company was the employer, health care provider, recreation program director and landlord. It’s no wonder the United Mine Workers Union fought so hard against the all powerful coal companies in those days. The coal camp of the ‘40s and ‘50s was actually a modern day feudal system, right here in the good old US of A. Tennessee Ernie Ford’s haunting baritone lyrics from the ballad “16 Tons” pretty much summed up the helpless feeling of some of the miners; “Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store!”

The miners and their families came from various backgrounds to form a community. They were black and white, Serbs, Italians, German, Irish, and Greek. Folks from the rural mountains and hollows and immigrants from all over the world flocked to the coal camps during the booming mining days of the mid 20th century. Work was plentiful and the wages were decent. There were surnames like Cannellas, Caruso, Adkins, Gostivitch, Meko, Ruiz, Kitchen, and Curry. Some were newly arrived immigrants, some were first generation Americans. They were Catholics and Protestants. In their homes various languages were spoken but all shared one thing in common – they dug coal. It was a dirty and dangerous job. The men walked home from their shifts, bone tired and filthy. Their white teeth and eyes stood out in stark contrast against their coal blackened faces. The women folk kept house, raised kids, and cooked big meals to feed big families. They did laundry (often scrubbed on washboards by hand) and hung it out to dry on clothes lines in the back yards near the outdoor toilets. The kids played together and made friendships that lasted a lifetime.

Even before the coal boom slowed, many of the younger residents began to move away. My dad was among the young men who came to Huntington to try to make a better life for his young family. Jobs with the C&O railroad, steel mills, and other factories were plentiful, and the work was not nearly as dangerous as the underground work in the mines.

Eventually the Dehue mine worked out. The coal boom went bust and the company sold the land to a logging concern. Families started moving away and the Dehue community began to crumble. More and more of the houses stood vacant and took on a dilapidated condition. The beginning of the end finally came when the tipple was torn down and the remaining residents were forced to face the fact that their community was in its death throes. One by one the houses were demolished until only two or three of the larger houses in the bottom remained. My Dad’s Aunt Maude Kitchen was one of the last two Dehue residents to move away. Most of her 90 plus years were spent in that coal camp. It was home. It was the end of an era when “Aunt Maudie” moved to the nearby community of McConnell where she died within a year or so.

Dehue no longer exists. The mine portals are sealed. There are no longer any buildings or houses standing. In fact, nothing remains that would indicate that anyone ever lived in that hollow. Two of the previous generations who lived and worked and played there have already passed away. My Dad and his generation are now in their 80’s and they are slipping away one by one. Tomorrow a number of the remaining former Dehue residents will gather together in an old school building in a neighboring community. They will share old photos and memories. They will catch up on the happenings of one another’s lives. They will talk of their various ailments and infirmities, and realize that some of the folks who were there last year, won’t ever be there again. There will be laughter and tears. They will all bring covered dishes from old family recipes (and Aunt Lena’s huge pans of meatballs and baked ziti will empty quickly). Door prizes will be given away and a few "Dehue Cookbooks" and T-Shirts will be sold to help defray the cost of the building rental. They’ll have their photos made together one more time with camcorders and digital cameras in the hands of their aging children.

My generation will soon be the last link to what was once a bustling community. We are now in our 50’s and 60’s. We lived in Dehue as babies and toddlers and visited grandparents there as young children. I doubt that the Dehue reunion will continue into the next generation. Our children basically have no connection or memory of the coal camp, and our memories are fading quickly. It’s always a bittersweet time for me on the second Saturday of August. I love to see the sparkle in my Dad’s eyes for those few hours when he spends time with some of the “kids” he grew up with. It brings back so very many precious memories for me too. I expect I will enjoy the day at the Dehue reunion.

Who knows how many more of them there will be?