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Many unsung heroes are among us

Steve Lipscomb was a son, a father, a husband, a Marine, a man of faith, and a coal miner. Recently, Lipscomb and his crew encountered an unknown pocket of water when a “sudden and substantial” flood sent millions of gallons into the Rolling Thunder Mine. Lipscomb lived up to his life of service, faith, family and community by ensuring his entire crew made it out safely. Officials said that as Lipscomb finished evacuating his crew, rising water filled the shaft so rapidly that he, the last man remaining, had no way out. It was the last time he was seen. After five days of ...

Do not fail to be thankful for what you have

In 2006, a few days before Christmas, doctors announced my wife had six months to live. She had, they said, a rare form of cancer that had spread to her lungs. There was really nothing that could be done. We had a one-year-old and I had been told my job was coming to an end the same day of the diagnosis. Thankfully, it was a misdiagnosis. Not only did I keep my job, but I kept my wife. Ten years later, doctors informed my wife they suspected she had a genetic form of lung cancer. Had my wife not been misdiagnosed in 2006, they would not have known about her lung cancer in 2016. My wife ...

Administration should reinforce ties to Hispanics

Is President Donald Trump losing the winning coalition he built just a year ago? He’s been the subject of premature political obituaries before — but Republicans are worried about signs that his gains with Hispanics are evaporating. Trump stunned pundits last year by very nearly winning the Hispanic vote outright. A constituency Democrats had come to take for granted suddenly seemed ready to realign with Republicans. But the numbers from the off-year elections earlier this month tell a different story. New Jersey townships with high proportions of Hispanic voters ...

It was Thanksgiving turkey to forget

I’ll start by making a few things clear: I love my father, I love cooking and I love Thanksgiving. And now that the throat-clearing is done, I can move on to the complaining. Because of all dishes in all the holidays on the calendar, there’s nothing like the Thanksgiving turkey for getting under your skin. And last year, it got under mine like the butter rub for a gourmet gobbler. My dad lives in Florida, where global warming has gone to retire, and he keeps the thermostat set to an Amazonian 85 degrees to boot. So, already cooking ourselves, my father and I were ready to ...

Nondenominational Christians are on the rise

A recent report focused on what is considered a rising trend of Christians now attending nondenominational churches. Quoting research from the General Social Survey, the report mentioned that in 1972, “fewer than 3% of Americans identified as nondenominational Christians.” Today, close to 40 million people identify as such. Stories like this always pique my interest due to my upbringing in a traditional Southern Black Baptist church in Athens, Georgia, during the 1970s and ‘80s. As a child, I often wondered what the difference was between being a Baptist or a Methodist, two of ...

Focus this week on caring for others

This week, millions of Americans will go to work thinking about when to thaw out their turkeys (start today), which sides to cook, what time to head off on travel and living arrangements for company. As they drive out, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jeffrey Epstein and even President Donald Trump will not be at the front of their minds unless they are pulled into social media and cable news. Millions of Americans will head out for the holidays and pass houses in which nameless and faceless residents live. They will pass by nameless homeless people, some holding cardboard signs asking for ...