THE GIANT HAS FALLEN
A Biography of My Dad, Noah Smith
On a cold frosty morning in a cabin situated on
Knife Branch, Wyoming County, West Virginia about the year 1897, little five
year old Noah Smith was at the kitchen window, very patiently watching the
patch of sunshine on the top of the mountain 700 feet above the valley floor.
He knew quite well, that he would not be allowed to go out to play until the
sun had risen high enough to melt the frost in the valley. As he waited and
watched, he drew little squiggles and worm tracks across the frosted windowpanes.
He knew that it would be at least two hours before the sun would penetrate
the steep wooded hillside and warm up the valley.
His mother Emily was busy at the kitchen stove
trying to prepare breakfast for his older sister Delilah and his two older
brothers, John and Floyd. There was also a baby boy Mathias, just a few months
old. Noah really didn't know if his dad, Allen, was home or not, since he
worked for other farmers and was frequently gone from home for long periods
of time. This was wintertime and his father working as a farmer, made the
chance for a big wholesome breakfast very slim and it must have been a challenge
for his mother to provide the basic needs for existence.
This pattern of living was evident for approximately
the next three years, when in Feb.1900, another baby brother was born and
they named him Riley. Grandpa Allen was home at least part of the time because
dad has told me of occasions when he would sit out on the front steps and
scratch his daddy's head, a ritual his dad must have enjoyed very much.
Allen sold a tract of land on Brier Creek that he had
inherited from his father. Soon afterwards, around the last of 1900, Allen
just seemed to have disappeared. No record of his death or divorce
has been located thus far. Grandma Emily sold the place on Knife Branch and
apparently went to McDowell County to live. Family notes have indicated that
The Ritter Lumber Company, in logging operations, knocked the pillars loose
from grandma's house and forced her to move.
What happened next in dad's life is shrouded in
mystery, too. After about a year, grandma Emily had to spend several months
in the Poor House in Welch, West Virginia and her family was split up. She
was only able to keep Riley, since he was so young. Dad was sent to Hillsville,
Virginia where he spent several months with a family named Allen. Dad has
talked to me on numerous occasions about his life with the Allens. That period
in dad's life was so happy that it left him with pleasant memories for the
rest of his life. He would tell me how pretty Mrs. Allen was, with her long
black hair hanging down her back and how beautifully she could sing and play
the guitar. Her favorite song must have been "Bury me Beneath the Willow,"
because it was dad's favorite too. Other songs he learned were "Barbara
Allen" and "Maple On the Hill". He learned a few chords on the guitar when
he stayed there. As a matter of fact, had dad not been so young at the time,
I would have to say that he fell in love with Mrs. Allen.
Quite a lot happened to grandma Emily while dad was in
Hillsville. She went to Pineville, West Virginia probably to find work, met
and married a man by the name of Jackson Farley but the marriage didn't last
long. In a search for her divorce, I discovered that Jackson Farley had been
married and divorced no less than eight times. Grandma's divorce was a sordid
affair in which she was accused of being a whore who had slept with negroes
and every other man in town. Farley's witnesses, his lawyer and the judge
were the same ones who had participated in all of his previous divorces. The
trials were almost identical in every respect. Even though the complete divorce
proceedings are a matter of record, no transcript granting the divorce was
ever discovered. Grandma Emily, I believe, went back to McDowell County for
a short time after her divorce.
Dad was probably fourteen or fifteen years of age when he left the Allen's
in Hillsville and went to Pageton, West Virginia, where he took a job as a
trapper boy in the coal mine. These fairly easy jobs were usually assigned
to young boys just entering the mine for the first time. Dad soon proved to
be too talented and ambitious to remain a trapper boy. He was soon to show
himself as an outstanding man among men in the coal mines. A veritable giant
whose skills and knowledge of practically every facet of coal mining would
allow him to pick and choose where he wanted to work and at what job he desired.
Most coal miners spent their entire life at the same job throughout their
coal mining career. They were either coal loaders, cutting machine operators,
track layers, or any one of dozens of other jobs outside or underground. My
dad could do them all.
In just a short while the family, consisting of Emily, dad, Mathias (who was
later nicknamed Tice), and Riley was reunited at Pageton. Delilah had died
and Floyd was on his own, working in a mine in Kentucky. John H. went to
Covington, Virginia in 1907, married and settled there. Dad never mentioned
Uncle John and I doubt if he ever saw him after he went to Virginia. Dad
rented a house in Pageton next door to a boarding house which was managed
by James and Mollie Rose. The Roses were to play a very important role in
dad's life because there was a pretty young widow by the name of Laura Harmon
in the family that dad took a fancy to. Laura was the daughter of Mollie by
her first husband. In just a short while my dad was a married man. The
marriage took place in Welch on June 9, 1910. Laura had two children from
previous marriages and with dad's family of four, he surely took on a lot
of responsibility for a young boy of seventeen.
Two women in one household are bound to cause trouble,
and so it was with mom and Emily. Whether it was jealousy or whatever the
reason, trouble brewed to a boiling point. I believe that one could
have killed the other if the situation had continued. I have heard my mother
say that Emily was crazy and had threatened her with a butcher knife on several
occasions. It is conceivable that grandma Emily had been tormented with misfortune
to a point that it had actually caused her to have a nervous breakdown. At
any rate, dad made the decision to have her committed to the State Hospital
in Spencer, West Virginia in June 1911. She died there of pneumonia on November
10, 1918.
In 1912, dad and mom were living in Blackwolfe where
Nellie was born on January.7. Next, they moved to Cambridge (later called
Fall River), where Kathleen (nicknamed Tellisile), was born on July 29, 1914.
Olivene was next, being born on September 25, 1916. and died on July 16,
1917. Cambridge was now called Fall River and I was born there on June 3,
1918. Dad said that I kept him from having to register for the draft for
World War I and I kept him out of the war.
May 11, 1919 was a sad day for dad. He was working close
to Tice in the mine at Shabby Run when a huge piece of slate fell and crushed
uncle Tice. Dad rushed to him and held him in his arms until he died. Dad
never completely got over Tice's death and some how blamed himself for his
death.
It was about this time that dad and mom decided to move
out of the coal camp at Fall River and moved into a small house in Roderfield.
This house was the first one that I remember. I recall visits from Uncle Zur
(probably Isaiah) and Aunt Surry (Sarah). Herbert was born here on September
23, 1920. Our house was situated on a sloping hill above the railroad where
they parked the shanty cars for the railroad workers to live in. I remember
going down to the railroad and being treated to candy bars by the workmen.
One man I distinctly remember was named Wash Rose. He was the blacksmith and
worked on a flat car with his forge and all his equipment. I believe he was
distantly related to my grandpa Rose.
Dad was working in the mine at Fall River, but he let
the Superintendent, Bill Little, talk him into going to Kentucky to open a
new mine. Dad was accustomed to making his mind up on short notice, but I
believe this was one of the worst decisions he ever made and I'm sure he lived
to regret it. He loaded our furniture in a box car which had been placed on
a railroad siding below the house and he loaded us on a train and we headed
for Kentucky. We had to stay overnight in St. Paul, Virginia in order to make
a connection for the train to Pineville, Kentucky. We arrived in Pineville
and had to stay with Mr. Little for a week until a house became available
for us to move into. The house they were building for us in Tee Jay where
the new mine was to be located, would not be ready for several weeks. Meanwhile,
we were moved into a rental house in Varilla to wait until our house was finished
at Tee Jay. The rental house at Varilla was large and was situated on a rather
steep hill across the Cumberland River from the highway. I remember a very
large company store being located on our side of the river, just above the
railroad. There was only a swinging bridge connecting us with the outside
world. While we lived here, there was a world of toys available for me to
play with. The next door neighbor was a concrete finisher and had dozens of
tools with which he let me play. I had a ball with his trowels and smoothing
gadgets. Trouble is, he needed them from time-to-time and I was left to play
with anything I could scrape up.
A horrible accident occurred while we were living
in Varilla. It was wash day and the usual tubs of wash water were in place
on the big back porch. Herbert was about 2 years old and he had the dipper
we used for drinking and was dashing it in one of the tubs of water. Now dad
was known on rare occasion, to lose his temper for short periods of time and
I guess he had grown impatient trying to get Herbert to stop. Dad grabbed
the dipper handle and jerked it away from Herbert, but what he didn't know
was that Herbert had his forefinger on his left hand run down the end of
the dipper and out the hole in the handle used to hang the dipper on a nail.
As dad jerked the dipper away from Herbert, it cut the tip of that finger
off. Herbert still carries the scar from that incident.
Time passed on, and our new house was finished in Tee
Jay. It was moving time again and in a week or two, we were settled in our
new home. The house was small with two bedrooms, a front room, kitchen and
a small pantry. It was situated on the banks of the Cumberland River, not
over 100 feet from the river's edge. Directly in front of the house was a
sort of a wagon road and across the road were the railroad tracks. They were
opening the new mine down the tracks about a half mile from our house. Up
the tracks, about a half mile was the railroad station. There was a swinging
bridge (they had a lot of swinging bridges in Kentucky), across the river
in front of the railroad station that led to a small store and a cluster of
houses across the river. I well remember crossing the swinging bridge, to
either get a bag of candy at Thompson's store, or in company with one of
my older sisters, to visit a farm house to buy milk and fresh country butter.
It was here that Marie was born on April 21, 1923. The flu was rampant then
and many people were dying as a result. I can't remember if we ever had a
doctor to visit us during that ordeal, but we came through it OK. Dad and
mom had to catch a train and go to Pineville to shop for food and clothes.
They would buy barrels of dried peaches, pears and apricots, a barrel of flour,
50 pounds of lard and a crate of eggs. It all had to be brought back to Tee
Jay on the train and carried from the railroad station to our house. No doubt
about it, we ate well. About this time, dad bought a player piano--of
all things! and I believe we only had one roll called "Crazy Waters", which
we wore out. With our lack of room in that small house, it was almost unbelievable
that dad would have bought a big piano. Needless to say, it didn't stay very
long. Mom was rid of the piano in no time.
We experienced several floods during the months we lived
there and the floodwaters came up to our back porch more than once during
that time. As a matter of fact, the floodwater plus the isolation from civilization
may have been the thing that triggered mom's determination to move back to
West Virginia. I'm sure, she and dad had many unfriendly conversations about
continuing to stay in Kentucky. I don't believe mom had the first day of real
happiness since they left West Virginia. At any rate, the decision was made
to move back. It was about this time that Obra had fallen head over heels
in love with the son of the Sheriff of Bell County, so she and Floyd Day
were married on August 26, 1923. The move back to West Virginia was accomplished
without fanfare, leaving Obra behind.
We were now back at Fall River, West Virginia, settled
in three rooms of a big duplex house that had water standing two feet deep
under the house. Talk about a pneumonia hole, this place had possibilities.
We, literally, had to walk on planks from our door to dry ground. But fortunately,
we didn't have to live there long. A much better house became available across
the road and we moved over there. Boy, were we ever experienced in the moving
business! Mom was really enjoying herself, being back home close to her mother
and all her friends.
Dad as usual, had a good job and bought a big car that
afforded us luxuries we had never experienced before. Every Sunday in the
summer time, we were loaded up in the big old 12 cylinder Studebaker, with
a large picnic basket and a watermelon, headed for Baileysville on the Guyan
River, for a day of fun and relaxation. On arriving in Baileysville, dad would
drive up on the hill above the bridge and park in a grassy flat. We kids
would grab our bathing suits and head for the bathhouses to change clothes.
Dad would usually stretch out on a blanket and take a nap, while mom was content
to just sit on the blanket and watch after the small kids. After napping,
dad would skate a little. There were numerous concessions around which included
a wonderful skating rink. About two o'clock, hunger pangs set in and the
kids headed for the picnic. Mom had the dinner spread out on a tablecloth
and we kids gathered around and started eating. Boy, was that good eating!!
We generally started off with boiled ham or pimento cheese sandwiches, followed
by boiled eggs, potato salad, banana pudding and coconut cake. After a reasonable
waiting period, we kids hit the Guyan River for another quick swim. (It was
definitely a no-no, to go swimming on a full stomach). We changed our clothes
and reported back to the car for a big chunk of watermelon. This about concluded
a typical Sunday at Baileysville, and I don't have to convince anyone that
we kids were pooped out before we were five miles on the road back home.
As I stated before, we were experiencing some of the
good life for a change. We owned the only electric washing machine in town,
one of the very few who had a telephone and dad had bought a new set of wicker
living room furniture. But bad things will happen. Dad had his hand lying
on the top of a mine motor and a three- cornered piece of slate fell and severed
his ring finger on his right hand and he was out of work for several weeks.
It was about this time that we had another addition to the family, a baby
girl Anita, born on August 24, 1925. This was to be the last one for a while.
Dad, for some ungodly reason, engaged in a road race
from Roderfield to Davy with the Superintendent's son. Dad was running
his big Studebaker and somewhere above Davy, he went over the hill and tore
his car up pretty good. The other guy's car caught fire and burned up just
below Davy. I remember them towing what was left of our beautiful car in
to the yard at Fall River. I don't remember what he did with the remains,
but mom framed his picture in the aluminum frame that came from the rear
of what was left of the cloth top It hung over the bed for years and may
still be somewhere in the family now. I am sure that dad caught the devil
for that prank. I don't think we owned another car for quiet a while.
Soon afterwards, dad enrolled in a correspondence
school, The Chicago Motor Training Corporation and took a course in automobile
repair. He finished the course in record time and mastered the art of repairing
all kinds of motor vehicles, including motorcycles and airplanes. Dad studied
his lessons in a large grassy area down at Spice Creek. He would take Herbert
and me with him and would park the car in the shade under some crab apple
trees. Herbert and I would play while dad did his lessons. This was a beautiful
and serene area to concentrate. It was the old homeplace of Grandma O'Neal
whom, I think, was the mother of my Uncle John Rose's wife, Becky. Herbert
and I played in the old house and climbed apple trees, while dad studied
his lessons. Well, dad got good enough to start a garage in an old empty
house in Fall River and solicit business. He had a gas pump installed and
it was my job to sell gas. Dad worked on a car or two and overhauled a couple
of motorcycles, but his business didn't bring in the money that I'm sure
he had hoped for. Needless to say, this venture didn't last long and dad
closed shop.
There was a family by the name of Walls who lived just
across the road from us about this time. They had a big old boy named Melvin.
Melvin, who was at least 20 pounds heavier than I, was beating the tar out
of me for some reason when a boarder, Mrs. Walls brother, pulled Melvin off
of me, gave him a swift kick and sent him home. The boarder's name was Ray
Gills. When he went back over to the Wall's, his clothes had been gathered
up and tossed out into the road. Now it so happened, that Obra and Floyd
had moved from Kentucky into a house beside the one in which we were living,
but they had returned to Kentucky for some reason and Ray was able to rent
a bedroom from them. Ray hired me to build fires, heat his bath water, and
keep the place tidied up. Eventually, Floyd and Obra came home and Ray moved
in with us for a while. Ray and Hazel took a liking to each other and so
they entered the bonds of Holy Matrimony on August 3, 1928 and went housekeeping
a few houses up from us.
It was about this time, that dad decided that he wanted
to quit the coal mine and try for a better life in the business world, so
he leased a large metal garage and five room house in Roderfield. It was moving
time once again! The garage had at least 10 cars in various stages
of repair, so dad had his work piled up for him to do. I'm sure that dad
spent hundreds of dollars just for parts to repair the cars, not to mention
the long hours of labor. But few ever came to claim them and dad wound up
with a garage full of cars that nobody wanted or otherwise, the owners couldn't
afford to pay the repair bill. Dad had to get the Sheriff to auction the cars
off at a fraction of his investment. It was another bad adventure in dad's
life that he seemed to recover from rather quickly.
In the meantime, things were beginning to get tough in
the coalfield. Fall River, as well as dozens of other coal companies went
bankrupt and suddenly there were hundreds of people without jobs. It was in
this environment that we moved back to Fall River in a nice five-room house
up next to the Big Rock and our old swimming hole. We lived in this house
for about six months and when the former store manager's house became empty,
we moved two doors down beside grandma Rose. We had it made at last! This
house had a bathroom, running hot and cold water, a garage and most of all,
a hot house where mom could store her flowers in the wintertime. Trouble
was, dad was out of a job for the first time in his life and he was hunting
everywhere for work. How well I remember a trip that dad took me on about
this time. We climbed on board his big Harley one morning with me in the
Buddy seat and set out for Home Creek, Virginia. Dad had heard that
the little mine over there was hiring, so he was going to check it out. Boy!
what a trip! We had hard top as far as Panther, but the road from there up
Panther Creek definitely wasn't an Interstate. There were rocks in the road
as big as basketballs and hills that dad had to speed up in order to climb.
It was on one of these hills that dad failed to dodge a large rock and I
was thrown about five feet up in the air. By the time that I came out of
orbit, dad was two hundred feet up the road and he dared not slow down because
that Harley would surely have given him trouble on that steep hill had he
stopped. Dad went on to the top of the hill and I had to walk a half- mile
to catch up. We eventually made it to Home Creek and dad found that the rumor
of work was false. While we were at the mine, a heavy rain shower came up
that made the road down the other side of the mountain pretty slick.
Dad elected to start the motorcycle by drifting and letting out the clutch
while in gear, a very common practice that was used when on a hill (it saved
having to crank the engine). Trouble was it didn't work too well in an inch
of slick mud. When dad let that clutch out, the rear end of that Harley skidded
and headed for the side of the road and turned over. Had it not been for the
steel stirrup in which I had my foot, hitting a large flat rock and holding
that motorcycle off my right leg, I am convinced that today, I would be a
one-legged individual. The rest of the trip home was uneventful. We went on
to Grundy, up the Lee Highway, over the Jumps, to Amonate, War, Premier, and
home.
Dad wasn't much for charity but he did get a job with
the WPA. The WPA was one of President Roosevelt's recovery programs administrated
by The Works Progress Administration. It was also known as The "We Piddle
Around" program. The job was digging roadside ditches on Hensley Mountain.
Dad, also, didn't take too kindly to digging ditches so he threw down his
shovel, walked down to the Hensley mine and of all things, got a job building
bank cars. Ray, in the meantime, found jobs down at Krollitz, running a coal
cutting machine. Krollitz wasn't a very big operation, and was located about
25 miles down Tug River from Fall River. Ray and dad drove that distance to
work for about two months when dad suffered another trauma. He was guiding
a steel rope onto the drum of a cutting machine, when a burr on the steel
rope caught the index finger of his left hand glove and crushed his finger
so badly that it had to be amputated. Dad drew a small workmen's compensation
check for a while, which helped us over the hump. Dad always said that we
ate his finger during this time.
Dad was doing OK repairing a car now and then and so
on this particular day I was helping dad work on someone's car and
he needed a small Rumford baking powder can to replace the cover on the oil
filler spout which was missing. He sent me off to search everybody's garbage
dump to try and find one. I was 13 at the time and old enough to sense something
was not quite right. Dad was extremely grouchy and hard to please. After I
had searched all the garbage dumps without success. I came back empty-handed.
Dad really blessed me out and sent me out again with instructions not to come
back until I had found that can. This time I was successful because I dug
deeper into the trash dumps. It was not until late that evening that I found
out what dad's trouble was. The date was June 16, 1931, Shirlie's birthday.
He was to be the last one.
Within the next year, dad and mom lost
2 more girls out of the family. Nellie married her old schoolmate, Cecil Clagg,
on March 17, 1932 and, barely 2 months later, on May 5, 1932, Tellisile married
Sheldon Coffman, who was in the Army. Nellie and Cecil started housekeeping
at Big Sandy and Tellisile went to Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Indiana to begin
her life in the military.
Sometime in the next two years, dad
got a job as Night Foreman at Premier. I can't remember how he commuted to
work, because I don't believe we had a car at that time. Dad managed to buy
a lease from a man who was leaving Premier. The company had built houses on
land outside the coal camp and leased them by the year, rather than renting
them by the month. It was a big house with five rooms, two bedrooms upstairs
and one bedroom, dining room and kitchen downstairs. The house was in terrible
shape. There were no windows in one of the upstairs bedrooms where Herbert
and I slept. Sometimes we would wake up with snow on our blankets and the
floor. No electricity was ever installed in the house, so we had to use oil
lamps for lighting. Dad installed an electrical line from the Indian Creek
mine around the hill for half a mile, wired the house and we now had electricity.
The line was so long and the wire so small that a lot of the voltage was dropped
in the line and our lights were dim. Two rooms downstairs were heated with
coal grates, but the upstairs was unheated. We carried water from a
spring down below the house. Boy! the first couple of winters were tough,
but we survived.
Dad helped me build a run-about out of an old Chevrolet
car. We cut the rear half of the body off and built a wooden bed on the rear.
This was our only means of transportation to town and to the company store
in Premier to buy food. We had about an acre of land, so we raised a big garden,
bought a cow and had a pig. Things were slowly improving over on Indian Creek.
I was 18 years old and started working in the coal mine
as a backhand with Uncle Riley loading coal. First thing I bought was
a 1937 Plymouth, 4-door sedan. Next, I bought lumber and built a garage down
below the house. One day, a bunch of dogs gathered at our house to make love
to our female dog. Dad was upset to the point where he vowed to shoot
them all. He ran out on the front porch with a loaded shotgun and blasted
away at the dogs. What he failed to consider was, that the dogs were passing
by the garage about the time he let go with a load of number 6 shot and peppered
the whole side of the garage. The car was in the garage and everywhere there
was a crack between the boards, one can imagine the result. I married Lillian
Elledge (nicknamed Bill) on October 4, 1938, turned the Plymouth over to dad
and moved into a house in Premier.
In October 1945, in anticipation of retiring, dad bought
a house in Montcalm, West Virginia. They moved there from Indian Creek. It
was a big, two-story house and there was a chicken house with 4000 chickens
in the deal. Since Dad wasn't too fond of chickens, he got rid of them and
made a garage out of the chicken house.
Dad continued to work at Premier and drive from Montcalm
every day. Herbert was living in Montcalm at the time, so he went to work
at Premier and rode the long trip with dad. One morning on the way home from
work, dad had an accident and tore the Plymouth up pretty good. He bought
another car from Floyd Day and in a short while he hit a darn cow in the road
and wrecked that car. I do believe that dad’s reflexes had begun to slow
down a little about this time. Having no transportation, dad went to board
with Nellie and Cecil at Premier. Cecil was General Mine Foreman there at
the time. I think dad became dissatisfied with this arrangement and was getting
pretty tired, so he retired from his job at Premier in 1947 and went home
to settle down. Herbert was able to get a house in Premier, so he moved his
family down there from Montcalm.
Dad never completely retired. After a couple of months
loafing, he tried to revive his coal mine activities and went to work at Goodwill,
a very small mine near Montcalm. He tried loading coal in a 28 to 36 inch
coal seam and found out soon enough that he just couldn't do it. From then
on, dad was forever searching for something to keep him busy. He started
in on the house, adding another bedroom and a bathroom upstairs. He overhauled
the steam heating system, dug a well and installed a pumping station in the
basement to keep it dry, and he must have spent close to a thousand dollars
trying to get TV that was worth watching. He installed several hundred feet
of "Johnson Line", connected to a Yaggi antenna up on the mountain behind
the house and at best, the picture that he was able to receive, was so snowy
it gave me a headache to watch it. Dad was pretty proud of his installation
and I don't care how long it was between visits, he stopped everything to
watch "General Hospital" or "John's Other Wife". He dearly loved his soap
operas.
Every morning, dad was the first one up. When I was home,
I would get up and go downstairs, knowing that he was always at the kitchen
stove eating his oatmeal. We would talk about how he was enjoying his retirement,
his planned projects, and just about any other subject that came to mind.
He never complained about anything, but he mentioned to me that he wasn't
feeling too well. He had been seeing his doctor quite regularly and had his
check-ups on time. He said his stomach bothered him quite a lot. His doctor
and about everybody else dismissed his symptoms as upset stomach or a touch
of heart burn, but about two weeks later, his doctor decided that his trouble
was a little more serious and admitted that he had a mass or lump in his stomach.
Dad was taken to the hospital and immediately scheduled for surgery. The
result was devastating: a malignant pancreatic tumor, which could not be
completely removed. I don't remember the prognosis but it wasn't good. They
discharged him in about a week.
We, literally, tried every where to
get dad in a nursing home or nursing care center where he could be treated
for pain, but none was available, so we set up a bed in the living room downstairs
and the girls tried their best to take care of him there. Bill (my wife) and
Jackie (Herbert's wife), went home to try and nurse him as best as
they could. Mom wasn't well during this period and could do very little to
help. In a week or two, we decided that dad could no longer bear the suffering
he was experiencing, so we decided to readmit him to the hospital. The doctor
in charge of the hospital did not like the idea of dad coming back to the
hospital, saying that they had done everything for him that they could and
he told Herbert and me that he wanted him out of there. We ignored that remark,
and left him in the hospital. Again, the family came together and tried to
be with dad around the clock to make sure that they didn't neglect him and
let him suffer.
Bill and I relieved Marie at the hospital
about 11 o'clock on the night of August 3, 1967 to spend the night with dad.
We made him as comfortable as possible and settled down for a long night.
Dad had been in a coma for a couple of days and of course had no idea that
we were there. The night was uneventful until about 5:30 the next morning
when dad groaned a little and gasped for breath. I rushed to get a nurse and
when I returned, dad was gone.
A part of me went with dad that morning.
As I turned toward the hospital window and looked out toward Heaven, his entire
life as I remembered it, flashed before my eyes and I vowed to record it
some day. I don't believe that Noah Smith ever had an enemy or had mistreated
any one during the 75 years that he was on this earth. He was my buddy, my
teacher, my mentor, as well as the best dad that ever lived. He loved his
work, his children, and his wife. He was never arrested for any reason and
never had a fight, not even an argument with anyone to my knowledge. Not many
men can match that record. Truly, the Giant has fallen.
Dad now rests in Roselawn Cemetery in Princeton, West Virginia.
Herman E. Smith,
December 13, 2001
Additional family history is available on the Internet at:
www.coalexchange.com\smith\wyoming_wv.htm
