EDITOR'S NOTE: Coal has been a part of the fabric of Utah for 161 years. But its future as a key energy resource is in question and may have reached a critical tipping point. This is part 2 of a three-day look at the issues surrounding this issue and the impact on Utahns.

CRANDALL CANYON MINE, Emery County — On this day when there is iced snow on the ground and a biting March wind is rustling among the evergreens, Frank Markosek will not say much.

His tears, just barely visible, say enough.

The tears detail the pain evoked from visiting this place for only the second time since the Crandall Canyon mine disaster — the second time since that awful day in that awful month of that awful year that seemed like just yesterday.

The story his tears tell is that of six men forever entombed deep in the belly of Crandall Canyon Mine, of how Markosek nearly died trying to save them, of how his injuries have left him not quite right, with a metal plate in his head and 14 broken bones that still hurt at times. And how that has to be OK.

Because if Markosek had it do it all over again, if he had to rush into the portal of the mine with the rescue team and risk getting crushed by tons of rock to try to save those men like he did eight years ago, he wouldn't flinch. It is just what a mining man does, try to save his brothers.

The six miners were buried and died. Three rescuers were killed 10 days later when a "seismic bump" hit the area. Markosek and five others were injured, but survived.

"This is sacred ground," he said, speaking in a near whisper at the solemn Crandall Canyon memorial, where the faces of the lost men are etched in stone: Kerry Allred, Luis Hernandez, Brandon Phillips, Carlos Payan, Manuel Sanchez and Don Erickson. The names also remain on the six badges that still hang outside the entrance of the mine, waiting to be retrieved at the conclusion of a shift that will never end. The mountain saw to that.

Those names will join those of 1,450 coal miners killed from working in Carbon or Emery County mines in being memorialized by a pair of monuments intended to honor their sacrifice, and their families, forever.

A new memorial

On Labor Day, the first of those memorials will be unveiled in downtown Price at the Peace Gardens, where an all-day event will feature the reading and blessing of the names of the fallen miners in Carbon County accidents.

The earliest death was 1896. The latest happened in 2014, when Alejandro Ramirez, 46, was crushed in an equipment-related accident at the West Ridge Mine in East Carbon.

Markosek and Dennis Ardohain have 84 years in the mines between them.

They have led a nearly two year-effort to get the Carbon County miners memorial funded and erected. There's been research, poring through old newspapers, knocking on doors for money, and knocking on those doors again.

"I've seen young children giving up the change out of their pocket and corporations finding generosity they didn't know they had," said Price Mayor Joe Piccolo, whose own father died in a coal mining accident. "It sends chills down my back. "

The effort raised more than $400,000, including a $100,000 appropriation from the Utah Legislature whose members acknowledged the lack of a memorial wasn't fitting for a state so indelibly linked to coal.

Carbon County's fallen will be memorialized on eight bronze plates set on black granite from China that surrounds a statute of a coal miner. Overlooking the memorial is a guardian angel designed and forged by Gary Prazen and Danny Blanton of Original Creations. An identical memorial will be erected for Emery County's coal mining victims.

Ardohain retired after a career in coal mining two years ago from Deer Creek and went into his first mine in January of 1970. He'd clean coal cars after school at a time when a horse was still dragging material around the mine.

"The only thing I've known is mining coal. I never had the chance to think about doing anything else," said Ardohain, who lives about 100 yards from where he was raised.

"I don't regret it. There was a time when it was real scary, but the caliber of people I worked with was incredible."

In these small communities, it's not unusual for everybody to know just about everybody, but mining amplifies those connections even more.

Community effort

Ardohain and Markosek go back to the days when their kids starting dating each other and even before when their parents would go polka together.

When the idea of the coal miners' memorial came up, the two friends threw themselves into the project with the zeal of young men, but blessed with the time bestowed on retirees.

At the outset, they had no idea the memorial would demand so much time, so much research and stir so much emotion.

"I feel like there is this thin veil separating us from those who died," Ardohain said. "Frank and I have come along at this time, both of us retired, and these people have brought us together and they are steering us. We're just the vehicle."

The miners' memorial is being called the largest public fundraising effort in Carbon County.

A committee of 28 people — some strangers at the outset — have worked on their own assignments to document the deaths and raise the money through raffles, poker runs, auctions, dinners, breakfasts and more.

"They have lived and breathed this," said Lori Ann Larsen, describing the passion of Ardohain and Markosek.

Larsen, who has worked 32 years in the offices at Energy West and Castle Valley mines, made her own sacrifices for the project.

Late at night, after work, she'd sit at home researching the victims of the May 1, 1900, Winter Quarters mining explosion — the nation's most deadliest mine disaster at the time.

"You can't imagine a tragedy of that proportion," she said. "There were times when I sat at my computer at night and I was literally in tears. I could feel those people around me. I felt like we were doing a good thing, but I just sat there crying."

Winter Quarters disaster

Over the centuries, mining in Utah and across the country often has been an immigrant's job.

At Winter Quarters, Larsen said nearly 70 of the dead were from Finland. Actual death certificates were not required in the state until four years later, however, and Larsen soon found wide gaps in the information she was collecting, and conflicting accounts over the fallen.

Larsen stumbled across the story of a man who likely would have died that day, but didn't, because he asked his friend to go to work for him so he could retrieve a stray milk cow.

Both were boys of 17. When the survivor knocked on the door where Lewis Leyshon lived, he was confronted by Leyshon's mother who said her son would be alive if not for him.

"He promised her he would find Lewis' body. He did, three days later." The account of survivors' guilt was published decades later, when the man was in his 80s and still haunted by the events that day.

One family lost nine members in the disaster. Fathers often brought their young sons to the mine, and Larsen said she tracked down a victim as young as 13.

As the list for the entire memorial began to grow, the committee published the names in the local paper, formed a Facebook page, and pleaded with the community for help in ensuring accuracy, and thoroughness.

Larsen contacted Finnish immigration organizations and, at one point, wrote a letter to the editor that was published in a Finnish immigration magazine.

Soon, the emails and the calls begin to fill in the stories of the dead from Winter Quarters.

A woman, now 85 and living in Michigan, became Larsen's pen pal as a result of the letter in the magazine. Her grandfather, Josef Andersson Kotka, was killed at Winter Quarters.

All accounts had simply listed him as Josef Andersson, so because of the outreach, the memorial will get his name right.

"I invited her to come out to the memorial dedication. I told her I would pick her up and the airport and she could stay at my house," Larsen said, "but she finally said she was just too old to make the trip."

Larsen said she recently learned that the woman's son is going to drive her to Utah to attend the ceremony — it has become that intertwined in her life.

Official accounts say 209 men died that day at Winter Quarters, but Larsen said she has tracked down a list of 221 victims she would like to think is final.

"I feel strongly there were more, but the only man who knew who was in the mine that day, died that day."

Larsen said the small group of people who have worked so hard giving life to the memorial want to honor the dead, their families and the legacy of mining in their communities.

"Coal mining is our way of life. If there were not coal in these mountains, our community would not be here the way it is today," she said. "It's our history, our lifeblood."

It's been a calling of sorts for many of them, a dimension of faith that has been uncovered much like the coal that reveals itself in the mountains.

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Ten days after the initial mine collapse at Crandall Canyon, Markosek was one of a team of rescue workers trying to reach the six trapped men when the mountain failed again. Markosek, who worked for the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration at the time, was among six men who were injured, but survived. Three other men didn't make it.

"I have seen men get hurt, I have seen men get killed. I have helped bring them out and I have been on the other end and been brought out," he said, looking about the memorial to Crandall's victims, his face tightening.

"In my mind, looking at these benches, my name should have been on there. You knew those guys. I was in there with them … I felt like for some reason, maybe the reason I am not on those benches was to do this for coal miners."

Email: amyjoi@deseretnews.com, Twitter: amyjoi16

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