Glenmary
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Glenmary Challenge
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This article originally appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Glenmary Challenge
West Virginia Missions Respond to Mine Disaster
Father Tom Charters proud of how three missions pull together in outreach effort.
Glenmary’s three Logan County, W.Va., missions are uniting as never before, says pastor Father Tom Charters. Their cause: raising funds for the two families who lost loved ones in the fire Jan. 19 at Aracoma Coal’s Alma No. 1 mine in Melville, W. Va.
The three missions in Logan, Man, and Chapmanville sponsored a meal Feb. 26 at St. Francis in Logan. All donations for the dinner were split between the two families with members who died in the fire.
“I’m just so proud of these people for coming up with this idea,” Father Tom says. “They decided they wanted to do something to assist the affected families—families they do not even know.”
The entrance to the Alma No. 1 mine in Melville is just three miles from Glenmary’s St. Francis Church in Logan. On the Friday morning after the fire, with two miners still unaccounted for, Father Tom drove over to the mine where a massive crowd had gathered. “But I didn’t know anybody,” he said. “I was a stranger.” Father Tom has been in the county for less than a year.
The next morning he was at a deanery meeting in Chapmanville where a collection was taken to buy coffee for the rescue workers. Later that day Father Tom, accompanied by a St. Francis parishioner who is a former mayor of Logan, drove to the Melville Baptist Church where families—and the governor, who is Catholic—were waiting for news from the rescue operation.
Also present was the Baptist minister who had waited with families at his church during the Sago mine disaster just weeks earlier.
Father Tom reports that he was warmly greeted by the governor and by the Melville Baptist minister, to whom he presented “the money for coffee from the Catholic Church.” |
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