Kenneth D. “Don” Nicewonder

Kenneth D. "Don" Nicewonder started his career at a surface coal mine while still attending high school. Nicewonder became a partner in Maxietta Coal Company in Kentucky. In 1974, in association with a small group of partners, Nicewonder purchased approximately 35,000 acres of mineral in the Knox Creek District of Buchanan County, Virginia and McDowell County, West Virginia. By 1976 Don acquired all of the capital stock of the company after which he expanded the operation and began shipping both steam and met coal products. More than 35 years later, the Virginia Energy property is still producing and shipping a quality product. Nicewonder started four new surface mining companies in Mingo County, West Virginia: White Flame Energy, Premium Energy, Twin Star Mining and Nicewonder Contracting Inc. in the mid-eighties. Nicewonder's visions of mining in an environmentally sound and conscious way produced surface mine reclamation projects to include the beautiful Twisted Gun Golf Course, an 18-hole links style public golf course, construction of approximately 15 miles of the King Coal Highway, 1-73 between Gilbert and Williamson, West Virginia, creating hundreds of acres of flat, developable land along its route, and a proposed new airport with a runway longer than Charleston's Yeager airport, to be constructed as the post-mining land use at the White Flame mine near Ragland, West Virginia. In the years that Nicewonder mined in West Virginia, he was an active member of the West Virginia Coal Association and the West Virginia Mining and Reclamation Association and was on the Board of Directors of both associations and served as Chairman of the Board of the latter. Nicewonder's companies received numerous prestigious state and national reclamation and safety awards such as being the four-time recipient of the David C. Callaghan Award - West Virginia's highest reclamation award, twice awarded the U.S. Department of Interior's Excellence in Surface and Coal Mining Reclamation award and two-time recipient of the Best Overall Surface Mine in Virginia Award.