I considered the Arehart family, Sandy and Gay and their five kids as my first family of Whitesville. Gay worked in the minds and Sandy was a stay at home mom.

They lived in Elk Run by the river just off Route 3 about a mile from the school. Gay’s mom, Mrs. Arehart was a janitor at the school. Several years later I bought her 1971 green Nova.

I’m not sure exactly how I got to know them so well or why they were so kind. Their daughter Sandra was in my room the first year. I remember going down evenings and spending time chatting with Sandy and doing some things with the kids. Around 11 PM Gay would come home from work and would chat with them in the kitchen for a while and then I’d finally go home.

I had Sandra, Jerry, Rhonda and Mark in my room. I have a lot of fond memories of them. I got to meet Gay’s sisters, and a brother of Sandy’s.

When I was down at the house I would run up to the M&M Quick Stop at Seng Creek to get pop or chips and the kids would ride with me at times. I remember when just Sandra and I went, on the way back I would let her drive the car in the alley behind their place.

The first year there I took Gay and Leebo Milam a neighbor up to my place in PA for Easter vacation. Pic 1   Pic 2   Pic 3   Pic 4

I think it was the following year that their house burned down around Christmas time. I remember offering my apartment in the Block House at Pettus Bottom to stay in if they wanted to as I was heading back to PA for Christmas vacation. I don’t remember if they ended up staying or not.

I remember going over to their place and helped clear up the debris. I would stay there all night by myself and kept throwing wood in the fire. I would just sleep on the round.

Sandra played on the Jr. High team I coached and we went undefeated her 9th grade year. She graduated in 1982.

They ended up getting a modular home put on their lot. It was really nice place and they had a pool put in as well.

I used to make Christmas Cards with the help of my students for 11 years. One year Sandy got into painting and started to made her own
"original" cards. When her daughter Rhonda was in my room she gave me a Valentines Day Card.

She was pretty good with the painting. She also did a painting of Ziggy hanging onto a rope which I put on one of my Bulletin Boards. I still have that painting on the wall in the apartment where I live now.

At one point I’m not sure what the parents were thinking but Gay and Sandy and Gay’s sister Patricia and her husband went on a weekend trip and they asked me to stay over and keep track of the kids. There were Sandy & Gay’s five kids and Patrica's two boys. Yeah I know what you’re thinking, what could go wrong!!!

Things were going well and at some point we decided that we’d have wrestling matches in the middle of the living room so we moved the furniture off to the side. Two of the boys got a little fired up and they ended up rolling past the chairs and hit the wall and broke a hole in the drywall.

Later when Jerry was in my room I got the idea of rafting down Coal River which was not big or swift. So I borrowed Jim Carez’s (the library teacher) Navy raft and Jerry and I started in at Pettus Bottom.

It had rained a couple of days before we went and the river was now
higher and swifter. Things were going well until we got down by his place where a bunch of limbs had piled up against one of the railroad trestles.

The raft hit it and twisted and water was pouring across the raft. I got Jerry on a pile of limbs by the trestle. The water was starting to pull me under and thank the Lord I was able to pull myself onto the pile of limbs.

We were right across from his place and we were yelling but no one heard us. It was a while before someone discovered us and the Fire Department came. Some of the firemen got on top of the trestle and lowered a rope with a loop and they hauled Jerry up. Then they threw a rope from the other side of the river and pulled me clear of the debris to the other bank. When I got my feet on the ground I thought that was it and relaxed but they kept pulling me and dragged me all the way to the top of the bank.

A few days later when the river was down one of my other students, Kevin Ferrell, who lived by Orgas had a John Boat and we went down the river looking for things that I had lost like the pump for the raft and some clothes.

The river was shallow and then but we hit a swift moving part that took the front of the boat down and it got caught under a log and started to fill with water.

The rope in the boat got wrapped around Kevin's feet so I got out of the boat, the water was up to my chest and got him untangled and out on the bank.

We then had to walk across a field with high grass for about 40 yards or so to get to the highway and up the road where his house was. From that time on we were known as The River Rats.

When Jerry was in Jr. High he would come over to my place at Pettis Bottom and play computer baseball with a few other guys. I also had a C64 game which was a Triathlon, he was the champ of that.

Gay & Sandy stopped up at my place in PA once when Gay had to go to a Mining Conference in Franklin PA near my place. They stayed with my mom and dad.

I stayed in contact with them for quite a few years.