Journalist Tom Bethell was a tireless advocate for coal miners and Appalachia
Republished from Kentucky Lantern
This remembrance of Tom Bethell was published this week in The Mountain Eagle, a weekly newspaper based in Whitesburg widely respected for its coverage of the coal industry, education and politics, and for bringing national attention to environmental and other injustices in Kentucky’s mountains.
When the Scotia mine in Letcher County exploded twice in March of 1976, Mountain Eagle reporters spread out to interview miners, recovery workers and others, gathering facts and chasing down rumors. Fortunately for them (and readers everywhere), Tom Bethell, then research director for the United Mine Workers, had dropped everything and was standing by in Whitesburg to turn their raw material into a seamless, compelling narrative.
Pecking away on a typewriter with only one finger at a speed that shamed the best touch typist, Bethell, who died peacefully on April 10 in Washington, D.C., at the age of 86, shaped stories in that week’s Eagle that gave a complete account of the disaster and all the mistakes that led to it.
Tom Bethell was no stranger to the Eagle or coal miners. A contributor to The Mountain Eagle for six decades, he dedicated his extraordinary investigative, writing, photographic, and analytic skills to demand justice for coal miners and Appalachia.
“Tom was a prince of a man, a saint in the too small world of advocacy journalism on behalf of those who carry an unequal share of our nation’s burdens,” said longtime Eagle contributor Jim Branscome. “Tom’s persistence in demanding justice for coal miners and the mountains has few equals. Coal miners and the cause of mine safety never had a better friend.”
Thomas N. Bethell was born on Feb. 8, 1939, in Beverly, Massachusetts. The youngest of three siblings, he attended but did not graduate from Harvard University, possibly expelled (the story goes) for dropping a typewriter from three stories to see if it would bounce.
In 1962, he began a series of editing jobs, the first of which, for Boston publisher Houghton Mifflin, brought him to Whitesburg; a year later, he began to write for the Eagle, beginning his long and powerful advocacy for Appalachia and its people.
In 1967, Bethell became information officer for Appalachian Volunteers (AVs), a federally funded anti-poverty program. Unlike many “poverty warriors” who came to the mountains with their own preconceptions and agendas, Bethell would listen and learn, said Sue Ella Kobak, a Pike County native whom Bethell befriended in the 1960s. “He was so much more aware of who he was within Appalachia, why he was there, and the limits placed on him in that place.”
Mike Clark, whom Bethell hired as an Appalachian Volunteer shortly after the two met on a Knott County strip mine in 1967, quickly learned that Bethell was a fast study — and driver. “Tom had a unique ability to put interviewees at ease while talking about death and injury in the mines,” Clark said. “As a journalist dealing with hard reality, such as mine disasters, black lung, and the bleakness of poverty, greed and murder, he never lost his capacity to find hope in ordinary people. He was the finest journalist I ever had the pleasure of working with and he taught me enormously how to use ordinary words to tell complicated stories with clarity, passion and accuracy.”
For all his serious work, Bethell never lost his great sense of humor, sharp wit, and zest for life. “He traveled across the mountains in a succession of small fast cars that he drove at high speed, often challenging coal trucks on narrow, potted roads,” Clark said. “He loved classical and rock music and had an ability to make up and sing songs at full volume while rocking at high speed.”
Filling the Eagle nest
Bethell and Clark resigned from the AVs to protest the anti-poverty organization’s firing of draft resister Joe Mulloy. At Bethell’s urging, Clark went to work with the Eagle, whose publishers, Tom and Pat Gish, were the go-to sources for information, inspiration, and couches to sleep on for countless people from and interested in Central Appalachia.
Bethell became the Gishes’ lifelong friend and partner, often finding reporters for their always screaming but struggling weekly. Phil Primack was one of many recruited by Tom into the Eagle Aid Society.
“I had visited eastern Kentucky while still in college near Boston,” said Primack. “In 1969, I was steered to Tom Bethell, who at the time was helping to launch the weekly Boston Phoenix. He in turn steered me to Tom and Pat. Instead of accepting job offers from some big daily papers, I went to work for the Eagle in 1970. I thank Tom Bethell for keeping me off a much more boring career ladder.”
Another Bethell recruit to The Eagle was Lauran Emerson, whom Bethell had literally rescued in October 1968, after she was badly hurt in a motorcycle accident. “Tom answered an emergency call from his friend Bill Wells and set out for the mortuary/clinic in Paintsville, Kentucky, where I had been delivered after the wreck,” said Emerson. “Tom raced his old VW station wagon over the mountains, and they loaded me into it and we headed for the hospital in Huntington, West Virginia. I remember nothing of that trip, but Tom never forgot the police escort that met us at the state line and sped him to the hospital. For once, the cops were leading him instead of chasing him.”
It was the beginning of another lifelong connection. “First Tom saved my life, then a few years later he introduced me to a whole new one when he asked me to take a detour on a trip west to ‘help out for a few days’ at a little newspaper in Whitesburg, Kentucky. The days became years, and the Gish family became family forever. The Mountain Eagle taught me what real journalism was.”
Writing for the Eagle meant covering mine disasters, strip mine destruction, and other heavy topics. Bethell was always available to not only help synthesize and navigate such difficult issues, but “to lift the mood in the newsroom” every time he visited, said Sallie Bright, who worked for the paper in 1972. “Tom teased everyone, cracked jokes, and generally created an atmosphere of fun. And yet he was very serious about his mission to keep the coal companies in check and to champion the residents of the coalfields.”
Typewriter power
Bethell pursued that mission with a steady stream of always insightful, always perfectly written pieces in the Eagle and beyond. “Conspiracy in Coal,” which appeared in The Washington Monthly in March 1969, exposed collusion between the United Mine Workers and Consolidation Coal Co., the owner of the Mountaineer No. 9 mine in Mannington, West Virginia which blew up on Nov. 20, 1968, killing 78 men. Bethell was driven by his outrage at the response to the disaster by then-UMW President Tony Boyle, who called Consol “one of the better companies to work with.”
Another Bethell article, “The Pittston Mentality,” drew a straight line from the manmade Buffalo Creek flood in 1972 in West Virginia, which killed 125 people and destroyed 4,000 homes, to the New York City board room of the Pittston Coal Company, whose decisions he showed to be directly responsible for the disaster.
In 1970, Bethell created Appalachia Information, becoming a one-man operation doing Herculean work, writing about “coal-related developments in labor, industry and government” in Coal Patrol, his monthly newsletter.
“Coal Patrol took Washington’s twisted political tales and stripped out the nonsense to get to the heart of the matter,” said Davitt McAteer, who has long worked to improve safety and health, especially for miners, including as assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor for the Mine Safety and Health Administration. “Tom’s book, ‘The Hurricane Creek Massacre,’ about the 1970 coal mine explosion near Hyden, Kentucky, was described by Ben Franklin of the New York Times as ‘one of the best pieces of angry journalism I’ve ever read.’”
In 1980, Bethell developed The Miners Manual to help miners understand their protections under the law. “He turned convoluted federal rules and regulations into logical, simple, easily understood passages,” said McAteer. “Tom had an exceptional ability to make complex topics easily understood by everyone.”
Longtime Eagle contributor Bill Bishop recalled how Bethell made himself available when Jim Garland, who was a miner, organizer and folk singer during the Bloody Harlan County union wars of the early 1930s, was trying to get his memoir published by the University Press of Kentucky. “Editors wanted an introduction that would put Garland’s story in context,” Bishop said. “Again, it was Tom to the rescue. Using his knowledge of union history and the Kentucky coalfields, Tom wrote the perfect essay – and Garland’s story, ’Welcome the Traveler Home,’ was published.”
Keeping alive the New Deal
Bethell’s journalistic advocacy and skills weren’t limited to coal.
In the late 1980s, as policymakers debated ways to engage young Americans in public service, he played a quiet but crucial role in reviving an old idea: a national youth conservation corps. Bethell, then an editor at The Washington Monthly, made the case for that revival in a 1988 article titled “The Conservation Corps: A New Beginning?” Drawing inspiration from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, he argued that a new version could tackle youth unemployment while restoring parks, forests, and public lands.
His piece caught the attention of congressional policymakers, who worked with Bethell to draft legislation supporting a youth service initiative. Their efforts contributed to the National and Community Service Act of 1990, which expanded federal support for conservation jobs and later influenced programs like AmeriCorps. His advocacy, rooted in New Deal-era ideals, helped lay the groundwork for what would become the modern Youth Conservation Corps, a program that continues to employ thousands of young people in environmental stewardship today.
“It wasn’t about nostalgia for the New Deal,” Bethell once said. “It was about what still worked.”
Similarly, Bethell’s work on Social Security stands as a testament to his unwavering commitment to protecting and strengthening one of America’s most vital social programs. As a close collaborator of Robert M. Ball, the former Social Security commissioner and one of the program’s principal architects, Bethell played a key role in shaping the discourse around its solvency and fairness. His work, which included co-authoring several influential reports and serving as a senior fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance, emphasized maintaining the program’s integrity while addressing modern challenges.
Through his thoughtful analysis and principled stance, Bethell left an enduring legacy in the fight to preserve Social Security as a cornerstone of economic security for generations to come, an especially urgent challenge today.
Tom Bethell leaves behind his wife, Katharine Joyner Bethell, stepdaughter Lydia Joyner, stepson Thomas McAvity III, and step-grandson Simon McAvity. He also leaves two older siblings in Massachusetts and Vermont.
In his final column for Coal Patrol, Bethell wrote a tribute to Ward Sinclair of the Louisville Courier-Journal, a friend of both Bethell and Appalachia. “It’s time to confess in public that I have stolen shamelessly from Ward’s files and stories over the past couple of years, getting away with it only because he is the most self-effacing of reporters and, fortunately, the finest of friends,” Bethell wrote.
Self-effacing and finest of friends. Amen, brother.
Last updated 5:31 a.m., Apr. 24, 2025
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: [email protected]. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter. Kentucky Lantern stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Donate to Kentucky Lantern here.
