Service held to honor coal miners killed in Robena explosion
Masontown VFW Post 4584 conducts a rifle salute at a memorial service Saturday held to honor the 37 miners who died in the Robena Mine explosion.
Daniel J. Kane, United Mine Workers international secretary-treasurer, speaks at the annual memorial service Saturday held to honor the 37 miners who died in the explosion at the Robena Mine Dec. 6, 1962.
CARMICHAELS – Joe Sebeck of Grindstone was only five years old when his father died in an explosion at the U.S. Steel Co.’s Robena Mine.
Charles J. Sebeck, 41, was one of the 37 miners killed when a buildup of methane gas and coal dust exploded about 650 feet underground at Robena shortly after 1 p.m. Dec. 6, 1962.
Being young, Sebeck said, he remembers very little about his father or about the events of that day.
“I remember playing in the snow and every time I went in the house, people were crying. I really didn’t know what was going on, and they didn’t tell me,” Sebeck said Saturday on the 52nd anniversary of the Robena mine disaster.
“It had to be hard on my mother, with five kids,” Sebeck said. But somehow, she got by. “She had a lot of help from family and neighbors.”
The United Mine Workers also were there to help, said Sebeck’s older brother, John Sebeck, 63, who remembers the days of waiting following the mine explosion while the recovery effort was under way.
“It was sad,” John Sebeck said. “A sad day for the whole community.”
The two brothers and members of their family were among the many who gathered Saturday morning at a service held by UMW District 2 and Local 1980 to honor the miners killed in the explosion and to reflect on the significance of their deaths.
The service is held each year at a granite monument along Route 21, just west of Hatfield’s Ferry Power Plant. The large tent set up to protect those in attendance from the steady rain was filled with people.
“Mine workers don’t forget each other, and we’ll never forget those brothers who died here at Robena,” said keynote speaker, Daniel J. Kane, UMW international secretary-treasurer.
What must be learned from the disaster and from the many other mine disasters that have occurred in the coal fields is that mine safety laws are necessary and they must be enforced, he said.
“Coal operators cannot be expected to regulate themselves,” Kane said. “When you let mine operators operate freely, what they create is death and tragedy.”
Kane cited, as an example, the April 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia, “where a renegade operator ran his mine exactly the way he wanted.” Twenty-nine miners were killed in the blast.
Don Blankenship, the former chief executive officer of Massey Energy, which owned the mine, was recently indicted on charges connected with the explosion.
“It’s about time, people are called to task for their crimes,” Kane said.
The disaster at Robena has often been cited as one of the events that prompted more stringent safety laws and the passage in 1969 of the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act. But it took the many deaths to bring that about.
“Mine regulations are written in blood,” Kane said, “and the blood of the Robena miners is in the law books.”
Kane also spoke about the injustice that exists for today’s working men and women that, he said, would probably shame the men who died at Robena given their sacrifices.
Though there has been a tremendous increase in productivity over the years, working people have not benefited, he said. “For years and years, we have been cheating working men and women, all for the sake of creating more billionaires and that’s wrong,” he said.
“Workers need to learn to become more dedicated to fighting for justice,” he said. “We’re on the verge of handing our children and our grandchildren a world and an economy that is much worse than what was given to us,” he said.
Joe and John Sebeck said they come to the service each year and appreciate the effort to continue it.
“It reminds you about what happened,” Joe Sebeck said. It also helps the union remind others about the importance of mine safety laws, “so this doesn’t happen again.”
During the ceremony, the names of the 37 men who died in the disaster, as well as the names of two men who died in another explosion at Robena Oct. 2, 1962, were read by Marlon Whoolery, Local 1980 president, who stood in as master of ceremony for District 2 President Ed Yankovich, who was ill.