Donald L. Sibray

From West Virginia (WV) Cyclopedia

Col. Donald Loammi Sibray (1898-1982) was the only son of William Willis Sibray, U.S. Commissioner-General of Immigration. Raised primarily in Pittsburgh, Sibray was instrumental in the development of the West Virginia coalfields and those across the globe. He attended the United States Military Academy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Military_Academy), at West Point, NY, but was graduated from the School of Mines at the University of Pittsburgh. He attributed his interest in Appalachian geology, rather than politics, to his youthful experience as a Boy Scout in Pittsburgh, "swimming across the Allegheny River."

Sibray lived for a brief period, in the 1920s, in Mount Hope, WV, while employed as an engineer with Koppers Coal Co., but later moved to Colorado, before returning to Pittsburgh. Determined to move his family from industrialized Pittsburgh, he purchased a hill farm at Grant Town, WV, (near Fairmont), while directing construction of the U.S. Army Ordinance Works at Morgantown, WV, in the first years of World War II.

Toward the close of World War II, the U.S. Army charged Sibray with oversight of the restoration of mining operations in Alaska, southern France, and western Germany. While in France, he worked as a U.S. liason with Charles de Gaulle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle) in re-establishing local French government destroyed by the Nazi invasion. Following the Korean War, he was employed as an advisor in the redevelopment of the Korean coal mining system. He retired to Grant Town in 1963, where he and his wife Dorothy were elected to local government positions. Sibray, however, contended he thought more of his achievement as a organizer of Boy Scout Troops in West Virginia

In 1981, during a battle with Alzheimer's, he was moved to live with family near Beckley, WV. He died in a retirement home in Glen Jean, WV, in 1982. He was buried in Homewood Cemetery (http://homewoodcemetery.org/) in Pittsburgh.