Barbara Kasey Smith

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 any 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 owned 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 extras or luxuries.

Barbara's fantastic imagination and ability to tell her siblings stories at night, kept her and them full of dreams, wishes for better days to come, kept them happy and waiting for another story each night. She told her serial stories and maybe a story would go on for a month or two. Many nights she would whisper the story until she would be hoarse.

Barbara lived in the state until she ventured out on her own to take a job with the Federal Government in Washington, D.C., where she worked for thirty-two years before retiring.