Well-known to anyone in the movement to end mountaintop removal—the destructive practice of blowing up mountains to get to coal, Keeper of the Mountains Larry Gibson had a heart attack and died yesterday at the age of sixty-five.

The very wild and extremely wonderful Whites of West Virginia are a close-knit, hard-partying, hard-living family of outlaws and misfits, Appalachian royalty, the descendants of renown mountain dancer D. Ray White and his wife the “miracle woman” Birtie Mae. Like the majority of Boone County residents, D. Ray grew up working in the coalmines. He contracted cancer and left the mines to perform his unique style of dance, but was murdered after the filming of Talking Feet, the PBS documentary about him.