JENNERSTOWN -- Just as rescuing nine men from the Quecreek Mine required a communal effort by volunteers, so did renovating an old hotel into Our Coal Miners Cafe, which includes an 18-room bed-and-breakfast.

	Darrell Sapp Owners Betty and John Rhoads in the main dining room of Our Coal Miners Cafe and Bed and Breakfast in Jennerstown. Click image for larger version.

The owners, John and Betty Rhoads, grew up in coal-mining families and own several properties here. Across the street from the renovated inn, the couple ran the Family Diner for 27 years before the three-story wooden building burned during an electrical fire on March 5, 2006.

By the time of the fire, the restaurant was called the Coal Miners Cafe in honor of the nine rescued miners. "We wanted people to remember a good thing," Mrs. Rhoads said.

After the fire, the couple needed a new location and looked no further than across the street to the former White Star Hotel, then a personal-care home. They purchased the property in May 2006 for $319,000.

Set atop Laurel Summit, the White Star Hotel cost $58,000 to build in 1930. Among its guests were Ford Motor engineers who tested cars' brakes on the Laurel Mountains. (Those engineers followed Frederick Duesenberg, the famous car designer, who suffered spinal and shoulder injuries on July 2, 1932 when the brakes on a car he was testing failed. He died a few weeks later of pneumonia.)

"Our mountains helped with the brake tests. The first crew worked at brake test stations and the second crew ate and drank," Mrs. Rhoads said. "They had ladies of the evening and ladies of the neighborhood."

Inside the entrance is a large wooden bar, once known as a "tea room" because liquor was served there in tea cups during the era of Prohibition.

"It looked like you were having tea if the state police came," she said.

Today, the bar room becomes preacher central when local ministers hold a Bible study there in the morning. Later in the day, women who belong to a local chapter of the Red Hat Society really do drink tea in this room.

During last year's renovations, the Rhoadses spent $56,000 just to convert 54 radiators to get air conditioning in the building and considerably more money to upgrade the kitchen and install a fire-suppression system.

Their daughters, Shawna and Johnette, helped with scrubbing, cleaning, painting and laying carpet. The family's friends and neighbors pitched in, too.

A former storage room in the inn is now lined with restaurant booths and coal-mining memorabilia.

The Rhoadses opened the inn on April 24, 2006, their 40th wedding anniversary.