COAL COUNTRY: _RO58886.NEF

Coal miner’s wife in Kitts, just outside Harlan, KY, 1978. This woman remained stoic the entire time her husband held a friend and myself hostage at gunpoint for 2 hours in their one-room cabin while threatening to shoot her. This was easily the most tense two hours of my life, but we all survived to tell the story. I never learned her name; her husband never introduced her, and she hardly spoke the entire time. But she showed little fear; perhaps she’d been through this ordeal before. Jon Chase photo
_RO58886.NEF

Coal miner’s wife in Kitts, just outside Harlan, KY, 1978. This woman remained stoic the entire time her husband held a friend and myself hostage at gunpoint for 2 hours in their one-room cabin while threatening to shoot her. This was easily the most tense two hours of my life, but we all survived to tell the story. I never learned her name; her husband never introduced her, and she hardly spoke the entire time. But she showed little fear; perhaps she’d been through this ordeal before. Jon Chase photo