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Dr. Dino Beckett, the director of the Williamson Health and Wellness Center, was waiting for me, along with about a dozen locals and Senator Joe Manchin. They were eager to tell me about how they were working to turn around their struggling community. They had started an incubator to help local entrepreneurs get new small businesses off the ground. The county was trying to turn abandoned mining properties into industrial parks that could attract new employers. They knew they needed better housing infrastructure, so they put people to work refurbishing homes and businesses. They realized that many of their neighbors were struggling with opiate addiction and other chronic health issues such as diabetes, so they opened a nonprofit health clinic. A recovering drug addict who had become a counselor told me how meaningful the work was, even if stemming the epidemic of substance abuse was a Sisyphean endeavor.

To make sure I heard a cross section of perspectives, Dr. Beckett had invited a laid-off coal worker he knew from their children’s school soccer team, Bo Copley, along with his wife, Lauren. Bo was a Republican and a fervent Pentecostal, with a T-shirt that said “#JesusIsBetter.” He lost his job as a maintenance planner at a local mining operation the year before. Now the family was getting by on what Lauren could earn through her small business as a photographer. When it was Bo’s turn to speak, his voice was heavy with emotion.

“Let me say my apologies for what we’ve heard outside,” Bo began, with the chants of the protesters still audible. “The reason you hear those people out there saying some of the things that they say is because when you make comments like ‘We’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs,’ these are the kind of people that you’re affecting.”

He passed me a picture of his three little children, a son and two daughters. “I want my family to know that they have a future here in this state, because this is a great state,” he said. “I’ve lived my entire life here. West Virginians are proud people. We take pride in our faith in God. We take pride in our family. And we take pride in our jobs. We take pride in the fact that we’re hard workers.”

Then he got to the heart of the matter. “I just—I just want to know how you can say you’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs and then come in here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend, because those people out there don’t see you as a friend.”

“I know that, Bo,” I replied. “And I don’t know how to explain it other than what I said was totally out of context from what I meant.” I badly wanted him to understand. I didn’t have a prayer of convincing the crowd outside, but maybe I could make him see that I wasn’t the heartless caricature I had been made out to be. I said how sorry I was and that I understood why people were angry.

“I’m going to do everything I can to help,” I told him. “Whether or not people in West Virginia support me, I’m going to support you.”

Bo looked at me and pointed to the photograph of his children. “Those are the three faces I had to come home and explain to that I didn’t have a job,” he said. “Those are the three faces I had to come home to and explain that we’re going to find a way; that God would provide for us, one way or another, that I was not worried, and I had to try to keep a brave face so they would understand.”

He said that earlier in the day he had picked up his young son from school and suggested they stop to get something to eat. “No, Daddy,” his son replied, “I don’t want us to use up our money.” It was hard to hear that.

After the meeting ended, I went off to the side with Bo and Lauren. I wanted to let them know I appreciated their candor. Bo told me how he leaned on his Christian faith in a difficult time. It was everything to him. I shared a little about my faith, and, for a minute, we were just three people bonding over the wisdom of the prophet Micah: “To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Bo was a proud man, but he knew he and his community needed help. Why, he asked, weren’t there more programs in place already to help people who were ready and willing to work to find good jobs to replace the ones that had disappeared? Why wasn’t there anywhere for someone like him to turn? I told him about my plans to bring new employers to the area and to support small businesses like his wife’s. They weren’t going to solve the region’s problems overnight, but they would help make life better. And if we could get some positive results, people might start believing again that progress was possible. But I knew that campaign promises would go only so far. As we drove off for Charleston, I called my husband. “Bill, we have to help these people.”