Orion Magazine - January/February 2012

TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: The first thing I want to say to you, Tim, is thank you. Thank you for what you’ve done for us, as an act of protest, as an act of imagination, and an act of true, civil resistance.

TIM DeCHRISTOPHER: Well thank you.

TERRY: So let’s talk about your mother.

TIM: [Laughter.] Okay.

TERRY: You know, when I saw your mother, I had a better sense of who you are.

TIM: Why did you have a better sense of who I am?

TERRY: I watched her during the trial. And I imagined what it must be like for her, who loves you so much, who gave birth to you, who’s raised you—what that must have been like for her to have to sit there, not speak, you know, watch how political this was, watch your dignity, knowing what the consequences might be and, in fact, are going to be. And I never saw her waver. I mean the only person that I saw with as much composure in that courtroom as you was your mother. You couldn’t see her—she was sitting behind you—but she never wavered. Her spine was like steel.

TIM: Yeah. I think that’s definitely what I’ve gotten from her. I only have vague memories of when she was fighting the coal companies, when I was a little kid, in the early days of mountaintop removal—I don’t know if they were really my memories or stories that I’ve heard from the family. But I think a lot of my activism has been shaped by that. I remember hearing about when this coal miner stood up at this hearing and said, “My grandfather worked in the mine, my father worked in the mine, and I worked in the mine, and you people are telling us we can’t do this, and blah blah blah.” And my mom just fired right back and said, “And if you start blowing up these mountains, you will be the last generation that is ever a miner in West Virginia. You will kill the family tradition if you try to mine this way.” TERRY: And how old were you?

TIM: I was really young. We moved away when I was eight.

TERRY: And so was this in the ’70s?

TIM: No, it was in the early ’80s.

TERRY: And you were born?

TIM: ’81.

TERRY: And what was the trigger point for your mother?

TIM: I don’t know. But then, as I got older, she got out of activism. She told me once that she pulled out of all the political stu= to focus on raising me and my sister. And I think that’s always been something that I carried with me. You know, that she had this role in the political sphere in our community, and she stepped out of that to put it into me. So I’ve always felt like I had somewhat of a greater responsibility to pull not just my own weight, but that extra weight that she put into me.