Author uses family history to bring mining to life
First novel draws on skills honed during 40 years in journalism
Madigan
Wire service UPI assigned Charlie Madigan to a reporting post in the Soviet Union, where he focused on the everyday lives of the people living under Communism. Courtesy photo
Madigan
Wire service UPI assigned Charlie Madigan to a reporting post in the Soviet Union, where he focused on the everyday lives of the people living under Communism. Courtesy photo
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For Charles "Charlie" Madigan, meeting people and telling their stories fueled his 40-plus year career in journalism and prompted his foray into writing his first novel about coal miners in Cambria County.
His novel, "Mine" is a work of fiction in tribute to three generations of Madigan men who toiled deep below the earth in the mines surrounding Portage. His great-grandfather, Martin Madigan, grandfather, Thomas Madigan -- who also served as the local fire chief -- and his father, Gerald Madigan, all worked in the mines -- and died of Black Lung disease.
"My dad, Gerald, had the option to go to college, I think on a football scholarship, but he had to work in the mines to support his family," Charlie said, speaking by phone from his Evanston, Illinois, home.
"Mine," is inspired by the stories he heard growing up and living in a coal miner's family, said Charlie, 74, who graduated from Bishop Guilfoyle High School in 1966. His family lived in Altoona but spent copious amounts of time at his grandparents' home in Cambria County.
After high school, Madigan attended Penn State Altoona for two years and dropped out.
"I got very frustrated at Penn State because they wanted me to have more science credits" prior to transferring to University Park. "I basically threw my data cards up in the air and walked out of there."
Where he went next -- the Altoona Mirror on Green Avenue -- set his life's course. He'd done some writing for the Pennsylvania Mirror and Mirror editor Bob Boyer knew his work. Madigan's starting pay was $75 a week, but what he learned was priceless.
"It was really fascinating, and I had a great time," Madigan said. "It was a super experience. I got to do so many things to show myself what I could do as far as writing and reporting and meeting with people and pursuing stories. It gave me the foundation that I needed to move on in journalism, which led me down a pretty good road," he said.
The road took him to the Harrisburg Patriot and then to United Press International, a wire service, where he was first based in Philadelphia and then later in Harrisburg, where he started covering government and politics. When an editor at the Philadelphia Bulletin tried to recruit him, UPI countered with an assignment in the Soviet Union.
There, he focused on "the normal people" and asked them "how they felt about the economy or Leonid Brezhnev (general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union). You'd go out to report a story on the secretary and would end up in somebody's little cabin for dinner with them. They treated you like a child, and everyone was so friendly. They would put out a table and you know that it cost them something because there wasn't much food available. It was just so flattering to be embraced and appreciated by people in another world, literally."
While in the Soviet Union, he used his relationship-building skills to develop interesting features.
"I wanted to know how they made their bread or how they made their toys or their cars," Madigan said. His feature work made himself a name on news desks stateside as more news outlets ran his articles. When he returned to the States in 1979, he worked for the Chicago Tribune, finished his bachelor's degree and taught at Roosevelt University while also being a contract writer for non-fiction books about national business leaders for Sears, United Airlines and AT&T.
"I would spend six months interviewing this guy intensively and then write a book for him under his name," he said. "They did well. I did a bunch because journalism did not pay enough to raise a family ... so I had to do other things. And, I don't regret them at all," he said, because they not only allowed him to provide better for his family, but he also learned how to write a book.
"Every time you do that, it's not that you're becoming a genius, it's that you're becoming fluid and telling complicated stories, which is always better."
Originally, Madigan planned to write a non-fiction book about coal mining, but when the contracted publishing house was sold, the new publisher declined to publish it. Rather than waste more than a decade of research, Madigan changed course and "Mine" became his first work of fiction. It's inspired by real events, including the 1940 Sonman mine that killed 63 men.
"My grandfather was also the fire chief, and he collected the bodies of those who were killed and took them to the firehouse and bathed and shaved and combed the hair of everyone so when their families came they wouldn't be as shocked," he said.
Other everyday images of his childhood -- his father sitting in a tub scrubbing the coal dirt out of his hair and ears -- and later -- his father meeting with other miners where they worked on paperwork for Black Lung benefits -- are combined with his reporter's knowledge of crime and investigations in "Mine," which follows mine investigators as they uncover a statewide conspiracy following a deadly disaster in Portage, Pa.
The book "Mine" by Charles Madigan is available on Amazon Prime and Kindle; hardcover is $17.99, paperback is $12.99.
The Madigan file
Name: Charles "Charlie" Madigan
Residence: Evanston, Illinois
Age: 74
Family: Married to Linda for 52 years; three sons, Eamon, Conor, Brian, all of the Chicago area; sisters: Sandy Madigan of Altoona and Roberta Kurland of Martinsburg; and a brother, Michael, in New Jersey
Occupation: Retired from the Chicago Tribune in 2009 with 40 years of service as editor, correspondent and senior writer; retired professor of journalism and politics from Roosevelt University; author and co-author of several non-fiction books including, "Dangerous Company: Management Consultants and the Companies They Save and Ruin," "Global Chicago," "The Hard Road to the Softer Side: Lessons from the Transformation of Sears" and others
Education: 1966 graduate of Bishop Guilfoyle High School; 2005 honors graduate of Roosevelt University with a degree in general studies with a major in history
Community: Builds and repairs ukuleles and guitars and donates a portion of earnings to the Evanston Food Program to help the homeless
Awards: Overseas Press Club Award for Human Rights Reporting for an investigation of war crimes in Kosovo