The new sign on Route 255 is green, and my writer friends are green with envy.
It isn’t every day that a nonfiction author sees a state road named for the hero of her book, but that’s what happened to me on Labor Day 2023. I was honored to be invited to the dedication of the Dr. Betty Hayes Memorial Highway, where I shared the stage with state Rep. Mike Armanini and former Elk County Commissioner Christine Gavazzi, who made this happen.
Inviting me to the ceremony, Rep. Armanini was gracious enough to mention the title of my book. He wrote, “Dr. Betty Hayes was ‘A Mighty Force’ who devoted years of her life to fight against inhumane conditions of the mining town she called home. She fought for the vulnerable miners and patients in Force and the surrounding Bennetts Valley area.”
The ceremony was held in north-central Pennsylvania’s beautiful Bennett’s Valley, nestled in the Alleghenies. The dedication was part of a joyous Bennett’s Valley Labor Day and Homecoming celebration. This is an annual event, held for decades but suspended for the past two years because of the pandemic. Hundreds of families came for the food trucks, the nickel toss, and the chance to see friends.
As the state representative said in his remarks, if it hadn’t been for Hayes’s efforts to find a safe new source of drinking water for the miners’ families, some people attending the event might never have existed. Fearing a typhoid outbreak from the contaminated water, Hayes led the miners in a five-month walkout. Lives were at stake.
It was a thrill to see several of Hayes’s relatives there, including some that had helped me with my research for the book or the subsequent “Overlooked No More” delayed obituary of Hayes, which appeared in the New York Times on April 1, 2022.
As I told the crowd, what Hayes fought for, above all, was a spirit of “genuine community” —something the miners couldn’t enjoy while they were forced to live in horribly unsanitary conditions. How happy she would have been to see the Bennett’s Valley celebration.
Courier-Express, DuBois, PA
