Dr. Betty Hayes lives on in Byrnedale, PA!

The best thing about writing books is hearing from readers. Recently, I was thrilled to get this message:

Hello. I know you don’t know me but I just finished reading your book, A Mighty Force, about Dr. Betty Hayes. I live in Byrnedale in my grandparents’ house. I was raised here too. My house was originally number 123. My family has lived here since 1924. My mother was born here in 1930. So many things you wrote about, my mother talked about. I believe my friends and neighbors should realize what Appalachian poverty really was. I’m not sure if you have ever visited but if do, you’ll be welcome to see the past and the present. Many descendants of the miners are still here or they left and came home. I did. Thank you for sharing this story. Denise M. Cuneo, Esq.

Denise and I were able to connect for a long telephone chat. I learned that in 1945, her grandfather was working for Shawmut Mining. He was one of the heroic miners that I described in my book. These gutsy heroes staged a five-month strike to support Dr. Elizabeth Hayes’s demands for sanitation, sewage removal and tolerable living conditions in their company-owned towns. They skipped many weeks of paychecks and endured company harassment with the full support of their wives and grown children.

Denise’s grandparents, John and Mary DeCarli, are the reason why Byrnedale, Force and Hollywood are still on the Pennsylvania map. Mining concerns had no interest in the future of these company towns, which they built hastily, let deteriorate, and abandoned when there was no more coal. Thanks to “Dr. Betty” and the mining families who supported her, the miners of these three valley hamlets won the deeds to their homes and the right to improve them. Now Denise is the third generation of her family to live in Byrnedale, while other coal towns have disappeared.

The valley’s only lawyer, Denise has somehow found time to improve her childhood home further with a new roof, new windows, and new siding. A kitchen renovation is also underway. Long gone are the outdoor privies that used to stand in Byrnedale backyards. Even after the miners won all their demands, including the right to buy their homes, it took several years to install indoor toilets.

The outhouses were unsightly and inconvenient. Worse, they were a health threat. Describing the three striking coal communities, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote in August 1945, All three towns, particularly Force and Byrnedale, wallow in sewage that overflows from the open privies with every hard rain. The sewage runs through the gutters along the almost impassable streets, between the houses, into the gardens, into the cellars—and in Force, into the wells that supply the town’s drinking water.”

Byrnedale, unlike Force, could draw water from a clean reservoir. But, though it wasn’t always easy, the three valley towns stood together, eventually gaining support from President Harry S. Truman’s Department of Justice, and winning the strike.

Denise has generously given me permission to share family photos taken in those times. I look forward to meeting her in March 2022 when I plan to re-visit Force and see Byrnedale for the first time.