The motorist driving into Grundy VA is informed by a roadside sign at the town limits that the Grundy High School wrestling team has won 15 state championships, eight of them in a row. What the motorist doesn’t see is the starting point for this string of titles:  a private white brick wrestling facility that coal mine owner/operator Franklin Delano (Red) Robertson built beside his white brick residence on a strip mine bench high above the highway.

“Red,” as everyone calls him, is a combination mining engineer/attorney/ coal company owner/sports booster/philanthropist who has a gentle manner and a generous heart.

The wrestling facility he built is home of the Grundy Wrestling Club, a non-profit organization for youngsters of all ages. The club members train locally, attend camps and participate in tournaments around the nation in the off-season and compete for the Grundy High School team during the Virginia High School League’s wrestling season.

Kevin Dresser, now the Virginia Tech wrestling coach, served as the Grundy club coach for ten years.  He said that while giving mountain youth from the Grundy area “an opportunity,” the club has became a national powerhouse.

Red Robertson has been the primary financial support of the Grundy Wrestling Club—while    building a national and international reputation in the coal industry for himself.    His financial support of wrestling also extends to Virginia Tech, his alma mater.  A planned wrestling practice center on the school’s campus will be named for him, Dresser said.

Red was born at Raysal in McDowell County WV and grew up at Feds Creek in Pike County KY.  He hitch hiked back and forth to Grundy (VA) High School, where he played varsity basketball until his graduation in 1952. More than half a century later, Red makes his home near Grundy and goes to his private office each work day in spite of some recent health problems.

He built the wrestling facility in 1983 for the Grundy Wrestling Club and expanded it in 1995 because of the club’s success and membership growth.  With Ben Ward, an All-American from ODU as wrestling coach, the club began to travel more extensively.  Grundy Wrestling Club paid the coach’s salary as well as the travel, food and motel expenses for the club’s teams, coaches and their wives on trips to wrestling camps and wrestling tournaments.  They compete with the best clubs from all over the nation and from such countries as Russia, Iran, France and Germany. Ward took the club to a higher level and produced two Virginia state champions for Grundy High School.

In 1988, Red hired Kevin Dresser, who had won an individual title and was named an All-American wrestler while at the University of Iowa, as the wrestling coach for the Grundy Wrestling Club.  In his 10 years at Grundy, Dresser’s teams won eight consecutive Virginia high school state championships.  He credits Red for “giving me the resource and the support” to turn the Grundy club into a national powerhouse.

Dresser moved to Christiansburg VA High School and after five years of rebuilding that program his wrestling teams won five consecutive Virginia state championships. He became the Virginia Tech wrestling coach in 2006. Travis Fiser, a two-time All-American while a student at Iowa, is the current Grundy club coach and has added five more state championships, said Lloyd Combs, a local sports reporter.

Combs described Red Robertson as “a good, kind, generous person who has helped a lot of people over the years.”  Dresser said Red wanted to “take away all the excuses for failure” for the boys in the Grundy wrestling club.

“Grundy wrestling is Red Robertson,” commented Jim Bunn, of Central Coal Company, who has partnered with Red in various coal companies over the past 30 years. “He’s had lots of support, but he was the mainstay of Grundy wrestling. He is more than generous.  His love for his fellow man and the future development of youth is uppermost.”

In 2007, Virginia Tech honored Red Robertson for his financial support in a special ceremony during a wrestling dual at Cassell Coliseum on the campus.  Virginia Tech has plans to replace the coliseum with a larger basketball facility and convert part of the existing facility into a dedicated training center for university wrestlers.  The facility will be named the Robertson Family Wrestling Center in recognition of Red’s longtime financial support of wrestling and mining engineering at Virginia Tech.  Dresser said that Red’s support of Virginia Tech wrestling is substantial. Red has been a donor since 1956.

Red earned a degree in mining engineering from Virginia Tech in 1956.  He began his coal industry career with Ames Mining Companies that year and he was a partner in the Thompson & Litton Engineering firm from 1960 until 1967.  From 1964 through 1967 he studied law at the University of Virginia and then set up a law practice at Grundy in 1967.

In 1970, he became affiliated with owners Jack Lester and Paul Chaney in Knox Creek Coal Company.  In 1972 he set up Robertson Engineering Associates, and thereafter he became an owner, board member or corporate officer in 14 coal companies in Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois and China.  At one point, the mining companies he had financial interests in were producing at the rate of 10 million tons of coal annually, but he has divested himself of several holdings. The mining companies he currently holds financial interest in are producing at the rate of five million tons annually.

Red and his American partners recently sold their interest in the Asian American Coal Corporation in China to Banpu, a company in Thailand, said Bunn, one of Red’s partners in the Chinese coal mine. Morgan Massey, a former CEO of Massey Energy, was the other American partner.

Red currently holds ownership interests or partnerships in Central Coal Company, The Eagle Companies, Eaglehawk Carbon, Knight Hawk Coal LLC, Sandy Ridge Energy Corporation, Energy Mountain Coal Company and The Pride Company LLC.  He is also a director emeritus and stockholder of Grundy National Bank.

He was in process of divesting his interests in several coal companies when he had a stroke in 2006.  He also had a cancerous kidney removed. Becky Bartley, his personal assistance, said in a joking manner that he had to reduce his 12 and 14 hour work days down to only 8 hours.

Red’s professional, industry, fraternal and alumni associations are many, but around Grundy he is best known as the financial backbone of the Grundy Wrestling Club. Tass, one of his three sons, currently serves as the club president.

Red began going to his sons’ Little League wrestling matches sponsored by the Grundy Wrestling Club.  He got involved with the club because he “wanted to give all the boys (in the area) an opportunity and see where they could go.  It turned out well,” he said.

He said that the boys who have belonged to the club have had a “one hundred percent graduation rate from Grundy High School and a 92 percent post high school education rate.”

Three club members have wrestled for individual national championships, and two have won. Red’s own sons—Shane, Tass and Brant--won four individual Virginia state wrestling championships and three free style state titles.  Overall, the club has produced a total of 88 state champions, said Jim Wayne Childress, a Grundy attorney who served as the wrestling club’s president from 1983 until 2001. Jim Wayne’s son was also a state wrestling champion, and one of Jim Bunn’s sons won two state wrestling titles and was a runner-up one year.

Childress said that while Red is “modest about his financial contributions” he has been the principal supporter of the club, although there are other financial supporters and volunteers. He said Red saw wrestling as a means for youngsters to build self confidence and to see, through competition with youngsters from around the nation and from such countries as Russia and Iran, that they were “just as good as anybody.

 “We were able to take the kids all over the country and to camps to learn from the best,” Childress said. “We built a program that is tops in the country.”

Dresser said the wrestling club had traveled by van, rental car, bus and airplane “just like a college team.”

Childress said the Grundy wrestling facility is better than those used by most college teams.”

Becky Bartley, Red’s longtime personal assistant, paid this tribute to her boss: “I’ve never met a person so willing to give of himself as well as his time and talents as this man, especially when it comes to the betterment of children.”

Mrs. Bartley stated that over the years Red has given financial support for such youth organizations as Mountain Mission School, which has provided a Christian home and education for thousands of children; and Good Counsel, a home for unwed mothers.  Red has also paid the way for students to take the “KAPLIN” study course for SAT testing. Red has also “helped numerous individuals—too many to mention—both financially and emotionally,” she added.

Red has also served on countless state boards and local boards.  He and his sons Brant and Tass are members of the Virginia Tech UT Prosim Society (“That I Might Serve”), a donor group.

For his many local contributions, Red was named to the Buchanan County (VA) Hall of Fame in 1999.

In addition to their three sons, Red and his wife, Bobbie, have one daughter, Spring Lee.