Dolly Kuchinic
A Mountain Rose of Steel
Tony & Dolly Kuchinic
Dolly was the close friend of my mother, Goldie May Boling
Stanley, in the coalfields of
In a community where everyone was dirt poor, Tony and Dolly may not have been rich at all, but they seemed rich. A home that had doilies on shiny furniture gave, at the very least, the illusion of being ‘well to do’. I have vivid memories of Dolly, even though I could not have been more than five years old when my mother went to visit Dolly once and took me and my sister Tiny along. Of course, my mother took us everywhere she went and I cannot remember a time when I was ever apart from her until I was upwards of twelve years old, other than the tortured hours I spent away from her in school; those hours that were limited by an asthmatic condition worsened by the cinder and ash from a coal burning pot bellied stove, and the smoke from my mother’s Kool cigarettes.
Dolly and Tony had two red Chow dogs that were mean as all get out. When they came home at night, one had to distract these dogs at the front gate while the other went in the back door. Once inside the house, the dogs were accepting and friendly to whomever was there. On one of our visits, Dolly told me I could have any money that I could find laying on tables and under scarves if I would be brave enough to search with the dogs there, but I clung tightly to my mother and would not venture away from her for fear of the big red dogs with the black tongues hanging out. Dolly must have had ‘a thing’ for courage, because once when some coal camp bullies sent my sister home crying, Dolly, who was visiting my mother, took her right back out to where these children were playing and watched as Tiny confronted and backed down the leader of this little gang of ragamuffins. Dolly loved my sister and always begged my mother to let her adopt Tiny. Goldie May was the quintessential mother, in capital letters; right out of God’s user guide on motherhood, and she would have let someone cut her appendages off limb by limb before she would part with one of her children. She didn’t mind sharing though and allowed Dolly to fawn over Tiny as much as she liked. Dolly bought clothes and presents for her on a regular basis. Not being able to have children of her own, she showered a lot of love and attention on her poor little neighbor who was rich in family love.
Tiny is on the left above in 1939, probably in clothes and shoes that Dolly bought for her. When she was little, she would always ask our mother why she had left that baby out there all alone and no matter how many times Mommy would tell her the baby wasn’t alone and that the baby was indeed herself, Tiny would ask that question again the next time the family pictures would be gotten out and gone through with the marvelous stories that fell from my mother’s lips. That is me on the right at Big Four, a mile from Kimball, in 1949.
WWII came and with the shortage of manpower, womanpower had
its birth, and thus, Dolly and Tony took advantage of the call by industry to
come and build the ships necessary for the war effort. I discovered this one day a couple of years
ago while going through my Mom’s old trunk which I had not opened since her
death in 1980. I found among the
glorious treasures therein a letter from Dolly to my mother from
There was a card from Dolly in the trunk in which she related she had gotten her welding certificate. This was quite an amazing achievement for a woman at that time and is a testament to the strength and courage of this beautiful woman. There was nothing soft or timid about Dolly’s spirit.
After the war, Dolly and Tony returned to McDowell Co, but
soon after, my family moved to Long Bottom, then Wyoming Co, and then on to
I found Dolly and Tony in the Social Security Death Index and the Florida Death Records on ancestry.com.
Anthony Joseph Kuchinic, 32074
Dolly M. Kuchinic, 32074
The original picture I have of Dolly and Tony is quite
probably the only picture to survive the lives of these two people since they
had no children and seemed to be an entity unto themselves. I am grateful for my mother’s penchant for
keeping things and for her gift of story telling, for it preserved a memory of
two very worthwhile citizens of
The letters and cards in the floor below are from my
mother’s old trunk; most are from her sisters and others from McDowell Co, WV
spanning over fifty years. After going
through them again yesterday,
christine hayes
(micky
During the years of doing family history research, my main
focus was in finding out about my mother’s father Horatio Seymour Boling whom
she never knew. I discovered he had a
son named Fred with his first wife, Sarah Blevins, and that this son had lived
in
Even more ironic, the
