Consol No. 9: A Decent Burial

It has been two years since the disaster at Consol No. 9 trapped 78 men in a trembling, burning tomb beneath Marion County, W. Va. Consol No. 9 was one of the worst tragedies in the history of an industry that has seen tens of thousands of tragedies, and for the families the end of it has not yet been reached. TIME Correspondent Arthur White visited the small communities near Farmington. where the wives, children and parents of Consol No. 9's victims --222 dependents in all--search to honor the dead. His report:

THE timbered, rolling hills of Marion County have seen death, and the markers dot the landscape. Here 361 perished at Monongah in 1907. There is Mount Calvary Cemetery where hundreds of them were buried in mass graves. In Farmington, there is a monument to 16 men killed in Consol No. 9 in 1954. Up the street races a boy whose father died in those same shafts two years ago. Out at the entrance to the Llewellyn Portal--the center of the explosions and fires on Nov. 20. 1968--a wooden frame holds a dozen bouquets put there on the second anniversary of the most recent Marion County mining disaster. The wreaths bear the phrases: "In loving memory," "Sadly missed."

There is a tradition in mining communities as old as grief, but layered over with the special stresses of men who go into mines: the dead must have a decent burial; the bodies must be recovered. Since the 1968 disaster, only five of the bodies have been brought out of the mine (three of them last week, the first to be found since October 1969), and returned to their families for burial. For the rest, there is division over what should be done.

As recovery operations stretched to 15 months--the longest and costliest in mining history--some of the widows sought an end to the strain of wondering "when the phone will ring to say they've found him." Worried that their husbands' bodies had been incinerated in the intense fires of the explosions, and discouraged by Consolidation Coal Co.'s reports that recovery could stretch over years, they agreed to a plan that would seal off from commercial production the portion of the mine containing the most inaccessible bodies. That area would become a cemetery, and a monument to the miners would be erected on the surface.

The plan was originated by The Rev Everett Briggs of St. Stanislaus Catholic Church in Monongah. "They've been living under a pall of death," The Rev. Briggs said. "There was this fantasy that widows couldn't remarry because their husbands weren't buried. They couldn't reorganize their lives."

The proposal was submitted to Consolidation's officers and quickly approved, with a $10,000 payment going to each of the families. Under the plan, Consolidation could resume commercial operation of the still accessible portion of the mine. An agreement, contingent upon approval of United Mine Workers, the U.S. Bureau of Mines and the West Virginia Department of Mines, was drawn up and signed by 70 widows.

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It was not an easy decision: "Tears rolled down my cheeks all the time I was signing the agreement," Mrs. Juanita Mayle said. "It was like putting a price tag on our husbands' bodies." Mrs. Barbara Toler, 25, like the other young widows, has had difficulty planning for the future: "I go with a very fine man--he's a miner--and we do plan to be married. But until this is settled, I don't feel I'm free." Mrs. Toler signed the agreement after "the company told us it would take three to five years to get them out."

Mrs. Elizabeth Skarzinski is familiar with tragedy. Her grandfather was killed in the worst disaster in U.S. mining history, the blast at Monongah that killed 361. She signed the agreement, but still hopes for the recovery of her husband's body: "I just bought two plots at Mount Calvary Cemetery. Even if they don't find my husband, I'll have a marker there for him, and that'll be our place." Women whose husbands were closest to the blast fear that their bodies were cremated and want the agreement's assurance that the shafts will be "inviolate ... in perpetuity."

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There are other widows who have bought cemetery plots, who want their husbands' bodies recovered, but, faced with no foreseeable resolution of their fealty to the dead, still signed the agreement. What will happen is as uncertain as the slow, dangerous job of digging into the pits where the men were entombed. Government and union officials have balked at the agreement. The Bureau of Mines wants to continue the investigation into the causes of the disaster. More than that, a local union official insists, the fragile emotional balance that miners must strike with fear each day they enter the mines will be forever shaken. "Mine folklore says they must be got out. To go down every day, the miner must know that if anything goes wrong, there will be unrelenting effort to get him out. If they give up in Consol No. 9, even though they're dead, miners will remember and fear it may happen to the living one day. A miner has his legends."

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