{"id":2206,"date":"2016-03-23T15:03:11","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T19:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2206"},"modified":"2016-03-23T15:09:45","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T19:09:45","slug":"betty-lou-harmison-on-interviewing-labor-leader-john-lewis-at-the-country-inn-in-berkeley-springs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2206","title":{"rendered":"Betty Lou Harmison on Interviewing Labor Leader John Lewis at the Country Inn in Berkeley Springs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When Betty Lou Harmison was a student at Berkeley Springs High School back in the 1940s, she was chosen by her journalism teacher to interview John L. Lewis, the great labor leader and president of the Union Mine Workers.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/berkeleyspringscommunitymatters.com\/2016\/03\/18\/this-week-in-morgan-county-betty-lou-harrison\/?embed\" width=\"620\" height=\"349\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden;\" webkitallowfullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Lewis was visiting Berkeley Springs, he would stay at the Country Inn.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThis was my first visit to the Country Inn,\u201d Harmison told This Week in Morgan County with Russell Mokhiber. \u201cThat\u2019s amazing, since I spent my later life there. But it was my first visit. I was excited about it and a wee bit honored and tried not to show it. I was honored that I was chosen from the class to interview John L. Lewis. I knew of him as the labor leader.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBut my journalism teacher had set me up with a terrible question &#8211;I was too young to know it was so bad.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI go to the reception desk and I say that I\u2019m to interview Mr. Lewis. He was in the reading room next to the park. I was scared to death. I did not know what I was doing, for one thing. And the other &#8212; he seemed like such a potent figure.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe hotel dog &#8212; the old bulldog Boots &#8212; had chewed up his hat. And he didn\u2019t get \u00a0angry about it. He just said &#8212; aw, it was an old hat anyway. He was so kind and nice to me. I sat on the footstool. We talked and talked until I asked the deadly question, which was the question that the teacher had insisted that I ask.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI asked my teacher &#8212; how do you interview people? And she said &#8212; well, you ask questions. And then she said &#8212; and be sure to ask this one. It\u2019s difficult, and I\u2019m being filmed, to even say it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt was this &#8212; Mr. Lewis, why do you work so hard for the coal miners to get a raise in pay when all they will do is buy a big long car to sit in front of their house?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAnd he immediately stopped me and that was the end of the interview. And he really let me have it. He said that I was overindulged, that I had been catered to and that I didn\u2019t know what I was speaking &#8212; that part was true. That finished off the interview. But I wrote up the article for the high school paper like I was supposed to. But I left that question out. But I wonder why that teacher did that &#8212; why she asked such a question.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Betty Lou Harmison was a student at Berkeley Springs High School back in the 1940s, she was chosen by her journalism teacher to interview John L. Lewis, the great labor leader and president of the Union Mine Workers. When &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2206\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2208,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2206\/revisions\/2208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}