Sunrise near Smooth, WV, in Greenbrier County
BECKLEY, W.Va. — Like rhododendron, historic farmhouses, grazing deer and an occasional black bear trying to meander his way safely across a two-lane country road, they’ve become a common fixture in the beautiful landscape of the rolling West Virginia hills.
Three crosses — two smaller light blue on the ends and one taller gold cross in the center.
Although it might seem as though the crosses came with the land, the first were actually erected 31 years ago, Sept. 28, 1984, in Flatwoods. In the nine years that followed, a Craigsville resident, the late Bernard Coffindaffer, led and personally funded a ministry that placed more than 1,800 crosses not only in West Virginia, but in several surrounding states.
Coffindaffer passed away in 1993, but his story and the story of the crosses did not end there. Some 845 miles away, in Vicksburg, Miss., a local newspaper ran an article about his death — crosses had been erected nearby. Sara Abraham clipped the story, folded into four and tucked it away in her Bible…