Southview to Gettysvue: From a Coal Camp to Olympic Podium, to Courtside with Michael Jordan

Born in a coal camp in Southview, Pennsylvania, to a German immigrant father who was a coal miner for thirty-seven years, my future looked preordained. I was headed to the coal mines or the steel mills in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was just a way of life in Appalachia, and the measurement of success was just getting a job, eventually getting married, and raising a family--a good life by everyone's standards who worked and lived there.The Southview mine, Montour No. 1, opened in 1914 and was owned by the Pittsburgh Coal Company. They paid their employees in company script that could only be spent at the company store. Housing was built by the coal company and eventually purchased by the miners. There was a two-room school with grades 1-4 in one room and grades 5-8 in the other. All the homes had outhouses, and the Sears and Roebuck catalog was the only toilet paper of choice.My dad committed suicide when my twin brother, Bob, and I were two and a half years old. We have