People Magazine Features OVEC Board Member in Lengthy Article

OVEC board member Larry Gibson was featured in the October 20 issue of People magazine.

Larry and the struggle against mountaintop removal got more coverage than Brangelina, Paris Hilton and Britney combined – four full pages! Here are some excerpts from the article:

Last Man on the Mountain

	Larry Gibson and Maria Gunnoe on Kayford Mountain

by Kurt Pitzer

Though his neighbors fled years ago to make way for coal mining, Larry Gibson is staying put – protecting his ancestral land… Gibson’s 50-acre property is touched on every side by land flattened by mountaintop removal.

"It used to be forest and farmland," he says. "Now it’s a vision of hell. It’ll never recover."

…After a family picnic, Gibson leads three generations of relatives up a rocky path to a small ancient cemetery at the top of Kayford Mountain near Whitesville, W.Va. Clutching a bouquet of wild daisies, his cousin Renda Phelps, 68, kneels at the tombstone of her niece. Gibson lingers over the grave of his younger brother Billy, who died in 2004, and closes his eyes.

"A lot of history up here," Phelps muses quietly. "There sure is," says Gibson… After a few minutes, the reverie is broken by the clank of coal mining equipment...

The constant clatter is a part of life for Gibson in this rural region in southern West Virginia, an area utterly torn apart by and utterly dependent on the riches of coal. "My ancestors are buried in this land," says Gibson.

"How can I leave them to be dug up by the coal company?"