Apr 2, 2002 By Steve Ostrosky 5 min read

Linda Chapman has carried many titles. Sister. Daughter. Friend. Wife.

The one title she doesn’t like is widow.

Last January, the Spencer, W.Va., woman became one of the 1,500 women every year who receives that unwanted title when her husband, Carson, lost a battle with pneumoconiosis, known to most coal miners and their families as black lung.

Another woman just like her becomes a widow every six hours because of black lung, and more than 100,000 miners have died from the disease.

Those were her words as she addressed a crowd at a United Mine Workers rally Monday at the Uniontown Holiday Inn.

Clutching a teddy bear her nephew gave her on the day of her husband’s funeral, Chapman told how she came to Uniontown and the march she and fellow widow Phyllis Tipton of Inez, Ky., are making to Washington, D.C.

They are taking this journey on foot for all the widows and all the miners who have died from black lung and to raise awareness of the obstacles that the government has put in the way of miners and families trying to receive black lung benefits.

Since her husband’s death, she has heard countless stories from women who watched their husbands die from black lung and asked for someone to hear them. She said other widows out there have similar stories to tell.

“I don’t know her name and I don’t know her husband’s name, but I know her grief, I know her pain and I know her loneliness,” she said. “Women say, ‘Somebody hear me,’ and I am willing to be that voice.”

Living with black lung is like “putting a clothespin on your nose and a sock in your mouth” and then attempting to breathe, Chapman said, and black lung victims suffer from the disease for years, as her husband did.

She has tried for eight years to get black lung benefits for her husband, and has still been unsuccessful. Too many families, she said, are just like hers and have been silenced by a process that was designed to help the nation’s miners ailing with black lung, but has only added to their suffering.

Miners and widows need to keep filing claims and fighting to see them approved, and changes must be made in the process to make benefits available, she said.

So, Chapman plans to carry with her to the nation’s capital the voices of the miners and widows she has met and will use those stories to make a difference.

She intended to walk to Washington last fall, but her plans were put on hold after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Since then, she has found a correlation between those cleaning up the disaster and those suffering from black lung, because almost 30 percent of the rescue and emergency workers who assisted at the World Trade Center site have reported a form of pulmonary disease.

“Those people need a lot of help, but not one person asked them to prove that they can’t breathe,” she said, referring to the lengths miners and families have to go to in their attempts to prove they qualify for black lung benefits.

She encouraged everyone gathered Monday not to give up and to make their voices heard by as many people as will listen.

“One voice can make a difference,” she said. “I know someone who will hear you every time you talk.”

United Mine Workers of America International President Cecil Roberts said Chapman’s speech was the most powerful testimony he had heard on the black lung benefits problem and why it is in need of a solution.

Roberts said he grew up with Chapman’s husband and even went to grade school with his brother, and he said the union will work to see that people like Carson Chapman and those he left behind will not have to jump through hoops to get the benefits they deserve.

He said the 1,500 miners who will die this year from black lung equals the number of people who died on the Titanic, but Titanic-sized public attention is never given to black lung. The union fully supports the women and their march, Roberts said, and he encouraged all who attended Monday to do everything they can to help this cause.

“You tell them, Linda, if you are coming back, you’re not going alone. We’re coming with you,” Roberts said. “I challenge Congress and those who have had cold hearts to hear our pleas. This is a matter of life and death.”

Among those in attendance was U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Johnstown), who pledged his continued support for the efforts of the UMWA and said he will work to introduce legislation with U.S. Rep. Nick J. Rahall of West Virginia to protect widows and miners.

“Bureaucrats don’t understand what this is all about,” he said. “You or a friend of yours are not able to get benefits, and I have refocused on this because the bureaucrats have changed it so dramatically.”

The union also took advantage of Monday’s date, April 1, to celebrate Mitchell Day, named for fifth UMWA President John Mitchell. Mitchell is credited with giving miners an eight-hour work day and began the crusade that led to the abolition of child labor in the United States.