ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 18, 1996 TAG: 9604180017
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: MCCOY
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
Fifty years ago today, a tiny spark triggered a deadly explosion, and the shock waves are still being felt.
Twelve men died here while working in a deep coal mine on April 18, 1946, an event that remains the worst disaster in Montgomery County's history.
This weekend, as our nation grieves on the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, there will be another memorial service closer to home, as kinfolk of those 12 miners and many others gather at the Coal Miners Monument.
In all, 44 names of those who died in local coal mine-related accidents this century are etched on the monument. Not listed are many others injured or sickened by digging coal, or those who came through the experience unscathed.
A number of Montgomery and Pulaski county residents recall the days when coal mining was the area's largest industry because they worked in the mines or grew up in mining families.
Now, all the mines have long since closed. Yet the memories are fresh, particularly of the Easter weekend in 1946 when 51 children lost their fathers.
It happened on a Thursday morning, as about 60 men worked more than a mile deep in the Great Valley Anthracite Mine at McCoy.
"I was the last person, I guess, that talked to them 12 men alive," said Charlie Albert, who was a foreman in the mine. Explosive methane gas was an unpredictable, dangerous presence in coal mines. Any electrical spark could ignite a gas pocket, and "something set it on fire."
Suddenly, in the mine shafts, there was "this big racket, and shook you just like a windstorm," Albert recalled, during an interview before his death several years ago.
Outside the mine, there was no noise or smoke. The survivors who stumbled to the surface spread the alarm. Soon there were sirens and ambulances and a watchful, anxious crowd gathered.
"It's an experience I'll probably never forget," said Esley Dillon, who at the time was a McCoy schoolboy. "There were tremendous crowds there ... and they started bringing the victims out. They had them on stretchers and on the mining cars. They took them to the maintenance shop, it was set up more like a temporary morgue for the relatives to identify the victims."
Miner Clayton Johnston might have been among the victims, if not for a premonition about the disaster. "I told most of the other miners about my dream," he wrote years later.
One of those was his brother, C.R. Johnston, who was among the 12 fatalities. "Daddy just laughed at him. He said, 'Let's go,'" said Mrs. Alvin Sarver.
George Paige also might have been killed, had he not taken an extra day off to recover from an injury. "I was supposed to go back that day they had the explosion. That saved me."
Two days later, on Holy Saturday, a joint funeral for five victims of the explosion was held at the Parrott Methodist Church, located in the small Pulaski County . All of their coffins were placed in the yard of the small church, and the minister gave the service from the church's steps.
"We were all more or less in shock. It was a few days before we realized about what was facing us," said Mabel Graham, who lost her husband, David, and was left with four children to raise.
"I knew we were going to have to work hard to keep our heads above water. You've got to go on with your everyday life. There are things on the farm that has to be done. The children were good to help. We took the horse and went to the field," she recalled in an interview before her death.
"It seemed like I was awful sad there for a long time," said Bob Graham, a Virginia Tech employee who was nearly 6 years old when his father died. "I never had nobody to show me how to hunt or fish, like a man would a boy."
People who knew Frank DeWease say he was never the same after losing his father in the explosion.
DeWease was convicted in 1968 of murdering his wife. Paroled after serving six years of a 20-year sentence, DeWease was convicted in 1974 of planting a bomb in a potato chip can that exploded when J. Patrick Graybeal, then the Montgomery County commonwealth's attorney, picked it off his wife's car.
The blast caused both of Graybeal's hands to be amputated. DeWease remains in prison.
All of the county's large coal mines closed within a few years of the Great Valley explosion. Few physical traces of the industry remain, after the mines were dismantled or filled in and the workers went on with their lives.
In 1994, after The Roanoke Times printed several articles about the county's coal mining history, a citizens group called the Coal Mining Heritage Association of Montgomery County formed. Within three months it raised more than $20,000, designed and built the Coal Miners Monument and dedicated the memorial at a ceremony attended by more than 1,000 people.
Saturday, as the association holds its annual Coal Miners Day, attendees will be mindful of the 12 men who died at the Great Valley mine.
Said Jimmie Lee Price, a local historian and coal miner's son whose uncle perished in the explosion, "For those who lived through it, it is a day no one can forget."
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROBERT FREIS/Staff. 1. Memorial carries the names of theby CNB12 who died in the Great Valley accident. color. File 1946. 2.
Dorothy Sarver (left) is assisted by relatives as she leaves the
funeral for her husband, John L. Sarver, at the Parrott Church of
God. 3. Great Valley coal tipple (above) at McCoy was the scene of
1946 accident that killed 12 miners. (Photo courtesy of Kenneth
McCoy) 4. Pallbearers carry the casket of miner Frank R. Price to
its grave at the Sifford cemetary in Parrott. Next to it is the
casket containing his brother, Paul J. Price, also killed in the
mine explosion. 5. A joint funeral for five victims of the explosion
was held at the Parrott Methodist Church. All of their coffins were
placed in the yard of the small church, and the minister gave the
service from the church's steps.