Emily Briggs
Navigator
What's a book that means a lot to you?
I chose this book because it taught me something about myself and where I came from.
Robert Millward (retired Ä¢¹½tv professor) recommended this book to me about 10 years ago. We’d run into each other in the Zink Fitness Center and got to chatting about our western Pennsylvania roots.
I mentioned during one conversation that my dad and grandfathers were miners and that my great-grandfather, a Polish immigrant, mined at Banning #2 in Whitsett, Fayette County, in the early 1900s. The next day, he handed me a copy of Cloud by Day. It reads like an elegy and speaks of the very same towns and coal patches I have known since childhood. There are recollections of extreme poverty, back-breaking labor, and violent oppression. The activities of the Coal and Iron Police were brutal.
I recommend this book, because it details everyday life in the coal patch. It’s like a window into my past. I hope anyone with roots in this area will learn from it as much as I did.
After playing basketball in college, Emily Briggs came to Ä¢¹½tv as an assistant coach in 2009. After two seasons, she moved into the Athletics Facilities director role, and then became a navigator in 2023.
Cloud by Day
Muriel Earley Sheppard
The University of North Carolina Press, 2017