Company Housing at Consolidation Coal Co. Mine No. 203 - Jenkins, KY
“Don’t forget where you came from.”
“An urban dweller with small-town values,” Susan Bodnar didn’t disappoint or forget her grandmother or her advice. She traveled far from the Pennsylvania coal-mining patch community of her childhood to make her own life as a professional in Manhattan, but kept returning to her family’s dying town.
Local unemployment numbers grew and insidious mining-related illnesses plagued my family – black lung, emphysema, kidney disease, brain tumors and other cancers, as well as psychological problems stemming from depression and alcoholism. Everybody chain-smoked.
Yet, this area of Pennsylvania and its people – my family – remained the place to which I always returned home.
Painfully honest, Bodnar recounted her struggles with stereotypes, identity and class on a CNN In America blog. Her compelling story inspired hundreds of readers to tell their own wrenching life stories.
