Washington Correspondent Mark Sullivan, who provided most of the reporting behind this week's cover story on the coal strike and its inflationary settlement, began learning about the problems of miners over five years ago. In May 1969 Sullivan was on hand in Washington as insurgent Union Leader Joseph ("Jock") Yablonski announced that he would run for president of the United Mine Workers. Seven months later Yablonski, his wife and daughter lay dead in their Pennsylvania home, the victims of murder. "I remember well the horrors of that snowy January night," says Sullivan. "I took a plane to Pittsburgh and drove south into the coal fields. When I tried to talk to miners the next day, most were afraid to discuss the matter."

Later Sullivan covered the trials of the Yablonskis' killers, as well as the Washington court proceedings that resulted in new union elections. When Reformer Arnold Miller was elected president of the U.M.W. in 1972, Sullivan was at Miller's Maryland headquarters watching the returns come in. Not long after, he accompanied Miller backhome to Ohley, W. Va.

"Miller, chain-smoking, sat quietly in the car while an associate drove at top speeds over the narrow mountain roads," Sullivan recalls. "Obviously the speed was part of the security effort for Miller at that time. I remember thinking that it was just as easy to get killed from hurtling off a cliff as from a bullet in the rear tires."

For this week's story, Sullivan returned to the hills of Appalachia. This time the miners, though still cautious, were more open. "At one midnight visit to the 'bathhouse,' a place to change and wash up after work, the miners got so interested in talking to me that it drew the attention of company officials," says Sullivan. "They told me I was on company property and would have to leave. The miners, their tempers already short, were ready then and there to take a stand for me. It was a kind of final prestrike showdown." Sullivan temporarily backed off, but by the next day, news of his curtailed visit had spread. "After that I was invited into the miners' homes to conduct interviews and meet their wives and children." Sullivan's files went to New York, where Associate Editor James Grant wrote the story with assistance from Reporter-Researcher Paul Witteman. Senior Editor Marshall Loeb was in charge of the editing. But before leaving the coal country, Sullivan ventured down into the Shoemaker Mine near Moundsville, W. Va., for a firsthand look at the diggers' domain. "As I emerged from the gloom, I felt like a kid coming out of the tunnel spook ride at an amusement park," he reports. "The best thing about it was seeing daylight and getting out of there."

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