Shining a Light
HARMONY — For painter Bill Perry, 232 Whitestown Road, art is all about how light changes our perception of reality. He hopes to affect more than a visual transformation with his latest group of paintings illustrating the role of coal mining in this country.
“No one was bringing the plight of the present-day miners to light,” said Perry surrounded by a half dozen of his most recent paintings designed to do just that.
“I wanted to tell the stories of people working in the mines today to support their families. It is their livelihood, their way of life,” Perry said.
So far, Perry has brought to light the images and stories of at least 25 miners and those connected to coal mining.
To accomplish the project, he traveled across Pennsylvania to meet the miners, photograph them and listen to their stories. He then painted each subject and included a short biography for each as part of an exhibit that will open Nov. 21 in Johnstown.
Perry said at first people were skeptical about talking to him but came around once they saw that he was interested in their lives. One of his subjects was Tim Berkebilie.
Berkebilie, 50, has been a miner for 24 years and now works as a miner operator for PBS Coals at the Kimberly Run Mine in Freidens, Somerset County. He has provided a good living for his wife Wanda and two boys.
Berkebilie was trained in heating and air conditioning, but because of the money, he chose to go into mining when he married Wanda and moved from West Virginia to Blough near Freidens.
“He made more money because they get paid for what they do. You have to be a certain breed,” Wanda said. “Some people just can't go down there.”She never worried much except once when he was transferred to the Quecreek Mine in Somerset where his uncle had worked.“His uncle told him to get out. 'They don't mine by maps,'” Wanda said. After two weeks at Quecreek, he took another job. Shortly thereafter, the news broke of the Quecreek disaster.“Any job in the mine is dangerous. Safety comes first and you watch out for your buddy. You've got to be sharp about what's going on,” Berkebilie said.But his wife's main worry is that her husband may not have a job in five years, and pensions went out with the unions.Another subject, Carl Meyerhuber of Apollo, Armstrong County, a retired history professor at Penn State University, helped Perry understand the role of the unions in the coal industry.Meyerhuber authored “Less than Forever,” a book on the rise and decline of union strength in Western Pennsylvania between 1914-1948. He agrees the future does not look bright.“The labor movement has pretty well faded. We are very deep in the Rust Belt, and there are very few mines left in Pennsylvania,” he said. “Mines in Vandergrift used to employ five or six thousand men. Now they employ about 1,000.”Meyerhuber credits the advent of oil as a heating fuel for the decline of the coal industry.“When I was growing up in the 1950s we had a coal bin. By the time I got to high school, it was replaced with an oil furnace,' he said. “When people began to do that, the coal industry plummeted. Air pollution was a main contributor. The rise of air quality concerns marked the beginning of the end.”But Berkebilie and others believe more could be done to preserve coal mining.“The technology and higher wages have made things a lot better. But government and EPA restrictions have made it difficult. They could make cleaner coal, but they are putting the money into developing newer forms of energy instead of coal,” Berkebilie said.“The average mine has reserves for 5 to 15 years, and then it's gone. My mine won't be there in five years,” he said.Bob Partsch, 25, of Johnstown travels to several mines as a surveyor for PBS Coals and agrees coal mining is a dying field.“I used to travel to six mines, now it is four,” Partsch said. “We have idle mines that are open but not being mined.”Costs have prohibited mining those at this point, he said. “They are not laying off surveyors yet, but they cut down our numbers and left them low.”Though Perry's purpose was to bring the stories of miners to the forefront, many people he met helped him also to uncover the past.Sister Eric Marie of McIntyre, Indiana County, who teaches at Mount Aloysius College in Cresson, is one of Perry's subjects. She shared stories of her life as the daughter of a coal miner.Marcee, as she likes to be called, lives in her family home, a former company house. Both her father and grandfather were coal miners.Her grandfather was electrocuted in a mine at 52-years-old, leaving her grandmother with 10 children, but she said the neighbors became adoptive moms.“They knew that the men could be killed any day. They were all in the same boat and so they cared for one another's children,” she said.Her father worked in the mines for 47 years and though he ended up getting hurt, too, she has fond memories of bringing him his dinner bucket as many of the girls did at that time.“R&P Coal Company owned us. We had a company store, a dentist that came, and a doctor, all near the mine on Main Street,” Marcee said. “A thousand miners worked in the town at that time.”The church was the center of the community as was the union hall where dances were held every Saturday night, Marcee said.“We were like a family with multiple brothers and sisters,” she said.The mine closed 50 years ago. All that is left now is the church.“The memories are very strong because the people were very kind,” she saidMining past and present has provided a good life for many, like the Berkebilies and Partsch. Marcee has also benefited from it greatly.“I was the first coal miner's daughter to go to college of all the towns,” said Marcee, who graduated from Indiana (Pa.) University, went into teaching and later entered the convent. She has been a nun for 50 years.“Even though times were difficult, the quality of life among the people is what I treasured, ” she said.
