Samuel Morgan Church, Jr. (September 20, 1936 – July 14, 2009) was a coal miner and president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) from 1979 to 1982. Early life Church was born in Matewan, West Virginia, in 1936 to Samuel and Helen (Cook) Church. He was one of eight children. His grandfather had been a mine superintendent, and his father had worked as a miner until an accident crushed his foot (forcing him to leave the mines and become a barber). The Churches moved to Virginia in 1944, where Sam worked as a shoeshine boy and pinsetter at a bowling alley. He participated in his first strike at the bowling alley, but the employer fired all the striking workers. At the age of 20 in 1956, Church moved to Baltimore, Maryland, and took a job at a sugar plant. Union career Sam Church returned to Virginia in 1965 and worked for the Clinchfield Coal Company as an electrician and mechanic. He rose quickly within the union, and was elected a UMWA field representative for District 28 in 1973. Although he supported W. A. Boyle for UMWA president in 1972, he joined Arnold Miller's reform movement after evidence of Boyle's complicity in the murder of Joseph Yablonski became known. In 1975, Church became an international field representative and a member of Miller's headquarters staff. In 1976, he was named deputy director of the UMWA collective bargaining department, and later that year Miller named Church his executive assistant. In 1977, Church was elected vice president of the union. When Church punched a former UMWA staffer in a dispute over a leak to the press, Miller asked Church to be his running-mate. But Miller was not in good health, and after a stroke and heart attack in the spring of 1978 he turned day-to-day operation of the union over to Church. Mostly recovered by the fall, Miller exhibited many of his autocratic, defensive habits. He told the union's executive board on October 29, 1979 that he was considering resigning. Then, in the same speech, he accused Church of plotting against him to seize the presidency of the union. Miller continued to fight with the union's executive board and leadership, but ill health ended his presidency. In November 1979, Miller suffered a second heart attack while at his home in Charleston, West Virginia. By this time, his political opponents had decided that