Frank already has the look of someone who has seen too much of life, yet is not about to give up. Digging the precious Appalachian coal is not an easy way to make a living. Already Frank's lungs have begun to deteriorate, and the common fate of miners will eventually kill him. However, black lung is not on his mind. Instead, he wonders if the mine bosses will succeed in shooting him down or seeing he is involved in some underground "accident." He has been talking Union. Headstrong and defiant, Frank will not go meekly into the bowels of the earth while he and his family remain virtual slaves to the Company. His destiny is set.

Delia has not heard much about women's rights or the Suffragettes. She stands proudly, hair up and skirts to her ankles, next to her man. Life is hard for this young woman and always will be, as she brings fourteen children into the world and buries the first two (including the daughter in the photograph) before they reach the age of seven; as she toils to put pinto beans and biscuits on the table; as she clothes her young ones in faded overalls and flour sack dresses, shoes reserved for Sunday and winter weather. She is too busy to be concerned about her lot in life. There are beets to can, stockings to mend, and prayers to pray. Neither is she insulated from the violence of Frank's world. While very pregnant, she bends over to squeeze out her mop at the very moment a Company thug shoots through the window behind her.

I often recall that story as I hold the portrait and consider what may have been if my grandmother had not been washing her floor that day so many years ago. She would not have lived, my father would never have been born, and I...I shove the unpleasant scenario from my mind. I think instead of Frank and Delia, young and in love on a sweet summer day, refusing their fears for the future; quietly building lives as solid as the eternal mountains, as deeply rooted as the West Virginia rhododendron.