Another Sketch and LO

I am still trying to use up my old stash. I am trying to create at least two layouts a month using my old stash. I have not created a LO exclusively honoring my Father and thought it was about time. I could not find any vintage looking Coal Mining background paper, so you know what I did...I made it! I made the background paper using old graphics and an old mining map of the area my father worked. I wanted to include the handerchief paper because this an important part of this LO's theme. There is hidden journaling on the card behind the photo and it reads:

This is a photo of my father's last day of working in the coal mine. He worked for Peabody Coal Company for nearly 20 years. Sunnyhill Mine # 9 closed after BP bought out the company and the land rights of the mines in Perry County. My father is the man siting in the front row to the far left and his best friend is standing directly behind him in the photo. The smaller photo is picture of my father supporting a strike in West Virginia. During this strike, the UMWA and the Teamsters joined forces blocking off roads and keeping non-union coal miners and truckers from transporting coal from the WVA mines. Growing up, I remember my father getting up each morning with lace-up steel toe boots, faded overall jeans, a metal miner's lunchbox and metal thermos of coffee heading off to work. He worked behind the scenes in a job that most people don't realize kept the spokes inside the wheel of this great promise land turning. Coal's energy somehow impacts everything we touch and use on a daily basis. Coal Mining goes back about three generations on my father's side of the family. My father was a true “ Redneck” and proud to be a " Damn Redneck". The term redneck and its literal manifestation, the red bandana wore around the necks of striking miners during the mid-1900s build multiracial unions of white, black, and immigrant miners in the strike-ridden coalfields of northern and central Appalachia. Redneck also means a "union man" or "or striker". My father has traveled through the Appalachia states as a UMWA union representative fighting and supporting fellow miners' striking for improved wages, health benefits and safety conditions of the mines during the 70's and 80's. I am proud to be a Retired Coal Miner's Daughter. "God Bless the Working Man