Ken Hechler: A Hero for Our Time

"No figure ever gave me more hope than you did ... When they finally strike a medal for guts and integrity, decency and inspirational leadership, the first one should be yours, hands down." – the late Ward Sinclair, Washington correspondent of The Louisville Times (referring to Ken Hechler).

(Italics are excerpts by Dan LeRoy for Graffiti where Ken was named ‘Eer of the Year for 2002.)

Ken Hechler talks with Texas populist Jim Hightower at the November 2002 "Just Gimme Some Truth" conference organized by MAPS (Marshall Action for Peaceful Solutions).   Related article : Hey! The Truth IS Out There!

The year was 1987 and I was just sticking my toe in the vast waters of environmental activism, hoping to spare Greenbottom Swamp from the "let’s build a dam here" mentality of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, aided and abetted by the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, who at that time had only one thing in mind for the wetlands – more habitat for waterfowl.

Greenbottom Swamp, the third largest wetlands in West Virginia and a haven for many breeding and migratory birds, is also the location of the General Albert G. Jenkins pre-Civil War home and one of the most significant native American archaeological digs in the state.

Though I hadn’t a clue about the waters into which I was wading, something inside me said that in order to weigh in on this issue, Huntington Audubon would need support from many interested individuals and groups (a tried and true organizing technique I now know that works).

Dr. Hechler, a local expert on General Jenkins and our Secretary of State at that time, was the first person I called. For starters, I couldn’t believe how accessible he was! His secretary put me right though, and we spent a great deal of time talking about the possibilities at Greenbottom. He was full of ideas and interested in being involved. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a relationship of shared activism that has endured for nearly two decades.

Thirty years earlier, Ken Hechler had already begun his political career as a West Virginia Congressman. "He was already in his mid-40s by the time he ran his first campaign, for Congress, in 1957. And by then, he’d already accomplished more than most people manage in an entire lifetime.

By the age of 40, Hechler had already lived a remarkable life – with so much more to come. Although I was a poor student of history and apolitical at best as a young person, the name Ken Hechler was very familiar to me. And no wonder.

"He took on the coal companies and the Boyle leadership of the UMW over black lung legislation, and won. He was the first major political figure in West Virginia - or anywhere - to propose an absolute ban on strip mining (emphasis mine). These things take political - and physical - courage," wrote conservative commentator Michael Barone in 1974. And William Safire noted in The New York Times that "Hechler risked not only his political life but his actual life in his battle; he gave ‘em hell and beat ‘em. Hundreds of miners now owe their lives to his fearless campaign, and conservatives like me take their hats off to a liberal with the courage of his convictions.

Since facing off with me in a high school auditorium packed with angry duck hunters in the late 1980s, we’ve shared some other battles. Ken has been the single most vocal public servant decrying the coal industry’s outrageous practice of decapitating mountains and destroying streams.

He’s been chided, kicked and shoved by angry strip miners in Marmet, WV, walked several hundred miles across the country with "Granny D," Doris Haddock, to call attention to a form of legalized bribery in this country masked as campaign contributions from big special interests, and most recently weighed in (pun intended) on the ravages to lives, roads and bridges caused by overloaded coal trucks in southern West Virginia. He has always stood firmly on the side of the people supporting them with dignity and courage.

Thanks, Ken. Your life is an inspiration.