A son of Appalachia and its coalfields, Arnold “Bud” Fultz has not forgotten his hometown of Wallins Creek, Kentucky. After 25 years as an airline exec with now-defunct Pan American World Airways, he felt compelled to speak out about what the coal industry was doing to the part of the country he calls home. In his book Fixing the Ungodly Mess: A Pathway to Change (AuthorHouse, 2008), Fultz takes aim at mountaintop removal mining, a technique of withdrawing coal from the mountains by removing up to 1,000 feet of a mountain’s summit.
“My heart never left the area and I still had relatives there.. In July 1999, I was watching Nightline. The camera was panning over my old town. It was a piece about a seventh grade class that was taking on the coal industry. “
