If you have ever known anyone who died in the coal mines, please add your brief memory after you read this.
From 1838 to the middle of the twentieth century, when approximately a half million men were working in the coal mines in the United States, nearly 30,000 men died. They were crushed by roof falls, burned in fires, drowned, fell to their deaths down mine shafts, and were blown apart by dynamite blasts and explosions. In the early years, immigrants often weren't counted. Bodies were never found because there was nothing left to be found. Men who died trying to form a union weren’t counted. Nor were men who died of lung-related diseases. So the number of coal mining deaths is certainly far greater than the official count.
My dad, several of my grandfathers, and most of my uncles spent their lives in the mines. My uncle Jewel lost his leg when it was crushed by a roof fall. My uncle Crody lost his fingers when a coal car ran over his hand. My uncle Floyd was shot at a union meeting with a bullet meant for my grandfather. My dad escaped three explosions, broke his ribs, broke his toes, developed pneumonia, and had black lung. In those years, few men left the mines whole.
Even though fewer than 100,000 men and women work in U.S. coal mines today, there have still been more than 10,000 additional deaths since I was a child in the 60's.
So here’s what I would ask you to do. In 2009 Congress declared December 9 as National Miners Day, chosen because on that day in 1907 in Monongah, West Virginia, 362 miners died in what remains the single worst coal mining disaster in United States history.
For me, it isn’t enough to cite numbers. Yes, the number of men killed in the coal mines could populate my home town several times, but who were these men? We have a beautiful ritual in my home town where, each December 21, when Orient 2 exploded and killed 119 men in 1951, each man’s name is read and there is a moment of silence at the time the explosion occurred. The picture I have here is from that memorial.
So would you please take just a few minutes to remember someone you knew who died in the coal mines? Or even a name you’ve run across. Let’s put names to those enormous numbers of men who have died.
If you know nothing but the name, that’s OK. Please add it here. If you DO know something about the person - their birth or death date, the mine they worked at, how they died, some sweet memory you have of them, whatever you want - would you please add that, also?
Thank you.
I will read every post. I will record every name in a document for a memorial event I would like to conduct each year.
I will make a donation related to the coal mines for every twenty-five names that are listed here.
Please share this post so we can reach every coal mining community and every miner’s family in the United States.
Let’s do this.
Thank you.
