Barbara Kasey Smith was born in a coal mining town in West Virginia. Her father was a coal miner. There were seven children in her family and life definitely wasn't an easy one in the coal camp community. I'm sure, you've probably heard the country song about a coal miner owning his soul to the Company Store; well, this is the truth, any miner in our town certainly owed his soul to the company store. They could never get ahead because everything they bought had to be bought from the Company Store and this took all of their salaries. Life in the town was lean and a struggle. No one had extra more...
