Larry Gibson, an unlikely activist who fought West Virginia's powerful coal interests to preserve a mountain that had been his family's home for generations, died Sunday of a heart attack while working at his family's property on Kayford Mountain in Raleigh County, W.Va. He was 66.
Mr. Gibson was best known for his tireless and often courageous opposition to a mining practice called mountaintop removal.
His father and grandfather had been coal miners, and he often said he had no objections to mining that left the mountains intact. What made him angry was to see the wholesale defacement of the landscape, wildlife, and the mountain culture.
