Coal People Magazine....

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT:
Coal Industry Veteran BYRD WHITE Loves West Virginia Whitewater and Sharing Coal Country With Others

Many of West Virginia’s rivers are well-known for world-class whitewater and they’re often surrounded by historic coal country. The state features the New, Gauley, Cheat, Tygart, and more when it comes to taking people for a mild to wild ride down a West Virginia river--and it takes river guides to get these adventurers down safely. That guide might even be coal industry veteran turned weekend river guide, Byrd White.

Based in Beaver, WV, Byrd is a veteran guide for Lansing-based Class VI-Mountain River whenever his “real” coal industry job allows. When he’s not on the river, Byrd is with the Hylton Companies. This follows a long career with Bluestone Industries and more (including serving on the Board of Directors and as Treasurer of the West Virginia Coal Association).

Byrd’s family moved to Beckley when he was in seventh grade. “Absent a few months between jobs, I have worked steady since I was thirteen,” he says. Byrd had a morning paper route and also worked at Kroger and Beckley’s first fast food joint, Burger Boy, before spending summers in the mines while attending college. “Bill Skews, Sr., gave me my first [coal industry] job at Winding Gulf Coals.”

The truth about why and how he became a river guide in the first place is almost stranger than fiction. And, as he says, “River guides have a particular truth--as long as there is something in the story that is true, then it is all deemed to be true.”

Byrd recalls, “In 1991 I had just turned 44 years old and realized that I had done nothing in the past 25 years except work and go to school. [I was] married to a wonderful girl and had two great kids, but something was missing. I had been with Jim Justice at Bluestone Coal for about 15 years and we had progressed from one small surface mine and one single section deep mine to a group of over thirty companies operating in four states. I quit smoking over a pack a day and started exercising a couple of years prior and now I wanted to do something, anything.”

Though he didn’t call it a “bucket list” like Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson in the hit film, he made a list of things he wanted to do. Pursuing West Virginia’s famed whitewater was on the list, but it was just one of many--like taking an EMT course and joining ski patrol.

“As luck would have it, a guy named Bud Frantz was the ski patrol director,” says Byrd. “Bud just happened to be one of the senior guides at [then] Class VI. In fact, most of the guys on the ski patrol were also river guides at Class VI.

“I still wasn’t doing anything about it until I was having lunch one day with a friend, Jim Mahurin. Jim was, and still is, one of the smartest guys I know. He was doing some consulting work for Class VI and asked me if I had ever thought about guiding. I told him that I had, but life, work and kids had gotten in the way. The next thing I knew he had arranged a lunch meeting with [founding partner] Dave Arnold of Class VI. By the time lunch was over we were both signed up as trainees.”

Dave Arnold says he was impressed by these two “older” men and their wish to guide. “Our varied groups of guides are generally younger, so Byrd and Jim definitely changed the dynamic of that season and every one since. We’ve found that our visitors really like the diversity of our guides on and off the rivers.”

With Dave’s endorsement, Byrd and Jim showed up in March for their first day of training, knowing absolutely nothing about what they were getting into except that they had both taken one river trip as guests. “I remember that day very clearly,” says Byrd. “It was snowing and I was sure that no one in their right mind would actually go on the river that day. I still think I was right, but I misjudged the ‘right mind’ part.”

A group of steelworkers from Ohio had come down to take a river trip despite the snow. Since Class VI would not send a one-boat trip due to safety reasons, it was decided that the trainees would paddle another boat with their trainer. “We all paddled as hard as we could, both to get done and to stay warm. We survived but the next week our group of trainees was much smaller.”

In comparing the whitewater industry to the coal industry, Byrd says, “I was struck by the difference in training for the jobs. I know that it is much different now, but my first job underground was in 1966. The first mine that I worked in was 27” high and my entire instruction was ‘follow me and keep your head down when riding the belt.’ To be a river guide, I spent every weekend [training] for three months and all I got was enough knowledge to get down the river. It took several more years before I considered myself a river guide.”

Byrd says his small group of mostly-younger trainees honed their guiding skills until the end of May and he got away from his coal duties once or twice a week to learn guiding. “I can still hear [the late] Robin Moore yelling--‘You damn college boys think too much, just go!’

“Robin was one of the best--not only as a guide but as a person. He not only showed me a lot about the river, he showed me a lot about life. He came to work for me some years later on a cleaning plant and was killed in an automobile wreck going home after a third shift.”

On Byrd’s first commercial trip as an official river guide responsible for his own raft, the water on the historic New River was higher than he’d ever seen it. Both Byrd and another new guide flipped their rafts and passengers, but all eventually made it down the river safely with lead guide Robin Moore keeping Byrd from thinking too much.

“My second year, since I was only a ‘weekend warrior,’ I was still very inexperienced,” Byrd admits. “Bud Frantz was my trip leader one day and--as he saw what appeared to be a group of weak paddlers start towards my boat--he asked them if they wanted to ride with him--thereby sparing me a weak crew.

“I ended up with a nice group of folks and gave my pre-trip speech, which includes, ‘Are there any medical problems I should know about?’ No one said anything until we were two or three miles downriver, when one of the ladies asked, ‘Does it matter that I’m 3 months pregnant?’ To which I answered ‘Not now!’ I had her come to the back of the boat and sit by me, with instructions to kneel down in the bottom in the big rapids.

“At lunch, another young lady came to me to ask if her father could sit in the back, as he was getting tired and had open heart surgery three months before. No, I am not making this up. I had him come back and sit right in front of me. In the middle of Double Z [a legendary New River rapid], he falls out. I really don’t know if he knocked me out of the boat or I panicked and jumped after him, but we both ended up in the water with me holding his life jacket asking if he was okay. Thankfully he was!”

Bud pretty much has the same recollection, though he does recall Byrd having a few choice words about Bud giving him the “stronger” paddlers. Bud says Byrd has grown into a great guide and that it’s not just about keeping guests in the raft. “The New River goes through historic coal country and Byrd knows the mines, the camps, the history, and the industry. That helps make him an interesting guide and he really adds to a trip that way.”

Bud also recalls ski patrol training where they had a “skier” played by Byrd who had hit a tree and needed to be evacuated. “Byrd played the part well and literally hugged that tree, making him a tree hugging coal man.”

Back on the river, Byrd says, “Some years later I had a group of all women, which normally I like since they are nicer to look at and they paddle better. Double Z is so named because of the way a boat has to move through the rocks: first right, then left, then back to the right and finish with a move to the left. Every move depends on being in the right spot. The first move is to float by a large rock and then make a very hard right turn, sometimes actually pointing the boat a little back upstream.

“Just as we made the first move, we were heading towards the right bank and [everyone] stopped paddling. As I was yelling to paddle before we went over the ledge sideways, I looked up to see two young men standing on a rock on the bank with nothing on but a grin. Somehow we made it and those women had a story they can still tell.”

To hear some of Byrd’s stories or those of another river guide, contact Class VI-Mountain River at (800) 252-7784 or visit www.class-vi.com.

This is freelance journalist Lynn Seldon’s second article for Coal People Magazine. The Virginia native grew up in Winchester near the West Virginia line in the Shenandoah Valley and has pursued many feature stories about the state. He loves West Virginia’s whitewater--and coal country.