He's like we'd all want to be at 91. Decent health. Sharp mind. Enjoys golfing, a cold beer and live music (he's a Tom Holcomb groupie).
Jack Eagan, a man of the mines, can't complain.
Born and raised in Boone County, he loved growing up in Nellis. A loyal Boy Scout, he earned the rank of Eagle. He played trumpet in the Sherman High band.
He started working at the mines picking slate at the tipple. He served in the Air Corps in Panama during World War II.
In 1950, he got a degree in engineering science at Marshall and started a three-pronged mining career with Montcoal. He worked on the engineering survey crew, dug coal as a section foreman for 12 years and signed off in 1984 after a 14-year stint in the personnel department.
Enjoying the fruits of a lengthy retirement, he splits each year between Florida and Charleston.
He's grateful for his longevity and thankful for the decent living afforded him by a chunk of carbon called coal.
"I turned 91 May 13. I grew up at Nellis. It was considered the most modern mining camp in the world. The houses all had running water and electricity and inside plumbing.
"My dad came to Nellis in 1921. He worked outside the mines. Everybody who lived there worked in some way for the coal company.
"There were about 700 to 800 people who lived there. When you first came into Nellis, they had two big buildings. The first one was the company store with a confectionery and post office. In another big building, they had a movie theater, a barber shop, an engineering office and a doctor's office. Later, they had this pool room and beer joint on the side.
"They kept the houses up. They had a carpenter for us. If you broke a window, all you had to do was report it and they would have someone come down and fix it. They did all the carpentry work and built walks and things like that.
"We were between Lens Creek Mountain and Drawdy Mountain, seven miles from each mountain. When I was growing up, it was a dirt road. You had to ford the creek a couple of times getting out to go to Charleston. In the '30s when the WPA came in, they built a road that is still pretty much the way it is today.
"There weren't many cars at that time. I went to Charleston in the winter riding in the rumble seat of an A-model Ford with a big blanket over me.
"I finished eight grades in seven years and went on to high school. I made good grades and I studied hard. After I got in high school, I forgot how to study.
"As a kid, I did a lot of odd jobs. I cut grass. In the winter, I carried coal for people, seven days a week. I got 50 cents a week for that. A woman there liked me. She came from England. She paid me a dollar a week and I thought she was making me rich!
"I got into Scouts when I was 11 and a half. The scoutmaster had to walk by my house to go to work. I would sit on the stone wall in front of the house and wait for him, and I kept aggravating him about joining Scouts. He finally let me join.
"In the summer, we would go to Scout camp up the hollow from Clothier. They would dam the river, and it made a good swimming hole. It was probably the only vacation some boys ever got. They would haul us up in a stake-bed truck, a store truck.
"The company would let us work to pay our way to Scouts. We would earn a quarter an hour cutting brush and things like that.
"I became an Eagle Scout. I was a Scout through high school. I was only 16 when the war broke out, and I was still in the Scouts.
"The war broke out in '41. I kept these newspapers you see here, the Dec. 8 and Dec. 9 Gazette. 'U.S. Plunged Into All-Out War.' I was delivering these papers at the time.
"I was ready to go into the service, but my dad, who had been in World War I, told me wait until I was 18. I went to the National Youth Administration. They had a place at Carbide. They taught you a trade.
"They took us to Maryland and around these defense plants. They made riveters out of us, so I was a Rosie the Riveter. I worked with two fellows from Uneeda, a Joe Louis and Al Gore.
"On my 18th birthday, I was sitting in the Air Corps recruiting office. I wanted to go in the Navy, but while I was waiting, this fellow I knew went in the Air Corps, and he came home in this uniform with wings and everything, and I thought, 'That's what I want to do.'
"It was a cadet program. We were called volunteer inductees. West Virginia had a high number of volunteers, but they wouldn't count toward the draft quota. Finally, they made it so if we enlisted, we had to wait to be drafted so they could meet their quotas. It was August before they called for me.
"I got a job at the tipple until they called me. They had more people than they needed, so they upped the standard and I missed out. We had 281 in our flight, and 160 of us washed out.
"We had a choice of going to radio school, armament school or mechanics school. I chose Denver and armament school. We learned how to load the plane with bombs. From there, they sent us for aerial gunnery training.
"I trained with a ball turret. I was a belly turret gunner on a B-24. After you got in the air, you cranked the turret down and you could crawl into it. When you came out of it, you had to crank it back up so the plane could land.
"They sent us to Panama. We didn't do hardly anything. They had four bomb squadrons there and two fighter groups. Every now and then we would get in formation and fly to somewhere like Havana or Guatemala City.
"When they had the Battle of the Bulge, they took everyone from our outfit below the rank of sergeant. I had just made sergeant, so I stayed there until I was discharged. I consider myself lucky. I served my time, and it was foreign service, and it was nice.
"When I came home, I went back to my old job of picking slate at the tipple. My brother-in-law was going to Marshall, and he talked me into going down there. I was there from '46 to '50. I got a degree in engineering science.
"When I would come home on breaks, I would work underground in the mines on a conveyor section about 48 to 50 inches high. You had to get down on your knees. That wasn't too pleasant. I thought, 'Boy, I don't want to do this the rest of my life!'
"When I got the degree, I interviewed a couple of places and finally went to Montcoal. They put me in engineering as a rods man on the survey crew making $275 a month.
"Then they put me in time study, working to see what you could do to improve production. After five years, I took a test and became a section foreman and did that for 12 years, working underground every day. I had 10 men on my section. We dug the coal. It was dusty work. Sometimes you couldn't see three feet in front of you.
"A job opened in personnel, and I asked for it and stayed there until I retired. I interviewed applicants, all the hourly workers. It was a good job. I worked on that for 14 years.
"I went to Montcoal in March of 1950 and in 1980, they moved their offices to Charleston and I moved down here. I retired in '84. I've been retired longer than most people worked. I've enjoyed my retirement.
"In '79, I bought a trailer in Florida next to my brother. We used that for 10 years. In '89, my wife and I decided to go down there for the winters. I go in November and come back around the first of May.
"I played golf down there three days a week. Now I play maybe two times a week, just nine holes, and I play a couple times a week here.
"I thought coal would be here for years to come. I hate to see it go down because I made my living at it. I could have done a little better if I had applied myself. I've got two sons. One just retired. The coal industry was his life, too.
"When I was in personnel, I would talk to applicants about retiring with the company. It's changed completely. The benefits were on the rise when I was there. They were putting in babysitting services and different comps, and the pension was almost guaranteed. They don't talk to you about pensions anymore.
"We hold a reunion in Nellis about every year. Nellis is a rundown place. It's sad to go back and see it.
"I donated a lot of stuff to a museum they made out of a church. I had a typewriter they used in the office and an adding machine. And I donated four or five books of old Nellis pictures.
"I feel very fortunate. I'm getting around good. I don't have any trouble. Oh, everybody has some regrets, things they would do a little different. I probably wouldn't have drunk as much as I did, but I sure had a good time.
"One weekend when I was section foreman underground, I had been out drinking all weekend. My wife was a little angry. She asked what I wanted for breakfast. I knew she hated to make pancakes, so because she was mad, I told her I wanted pancakes.
"If you've ever been out drinking, you know you don't want pancakes for breakfast. I ate about half of them and shoved them aside. She packed my lunch bucket. I opened that bucket and there were those pancakes.
"I still go out but not like I used to. I go see Tom Holcomb at the Bistro and Los Agaves. I've been following him since 1988 when he was at the Fifth Quarter.
"I always look forward to going to Florida and coming back to West Virginia. I'm just riding along now."
Reach Sandy Wells at sandyw@wvgazette.com or 304-342-5027.