Ken Hechler, a leading voice for national coal-mining reforms during his nine terms in the House of Representatives and a colorful presence in West Virginia politics for decades, died on Saturday at his home in Romney, W.Va. He was 102 and had been the oldest living former member of Congress.

His wife, Carol, said the cause was a stroke.

Before entering politics, Mr. Hechler was a college professor, a best-selling author and a speechwriter for President Harry S. Truman.

A Long Island native, he was elected to Congress as a Democrat in the fall of 1958, only a year after arriving in West Virginia to teach government at Marshall College in Huntington.

“I was a carpetbagger in a state where people and their ancestors are very much honored,” he said in an interview for the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in 1985. “Everybody kept asking me, ‘Who are you kin to? Hechler? I never heard that name around here.’ ”