Freed miners fall from grace at home

SOMERSET, Pa. - Even as they were hauled soaked and sooty from a flooded coal mine 240 feet under, the future was all but cast for the famously trapped, miraculously freed Quecreek Nine.

There would be a book about their 77-hour near-death ordeal, of course, and a TV movie. Oprah's people would call, and People's people. Under the media gro-lights, this middle-of-nowhere town would turn for a moment into the center of the universe, a destination for busloads of tourists to come and gawk at a drill hole in a pasture and maybe glimpse the miners who couldn't possibly have survived down there, but did.

Yet something happened on the way to a happy ending. As one resident said, something "ugly."

More than three months after the euphoric midnight liberation on July 28, unsigned letters with local postmarks are showing up in the mailboxes of rescued miners, with warnings to "Keep your trap shut."

Men praised by President Bush as embodiments of the "spirit of America" are cursed by old buddies and shunned by some who saved their lives.

"It's a miracle gone sour is what it is," said Leroy Lepley, a miner who pumped water from the flooded tunnels 19 hours a day during the rescue.

Almost from the start, there was petty grumbling as the miners were feted at NASCAR races, a Steelers game, the Miss America pageant. A lot of fuss, some said, for guys who, after all, were accidental celebrities.

In the last few weeks, though, the criticism has turned cutting, sharpened not by jealousy so much as fear. The Quecreek Nine haven't been back to the mines. But many here who have no such choice now worry that their old mates will take down the company that feeds them and their families.

"All the good feelings we had - the jubilation - it's all gone when you think you might lose your job," Lepley said.

Stoking their angst is the host of formal inquiries under way. Two mine-safety panels are probing the accident. State and federal authorities are considering criminal investigations.

Even a U.S. Senate subcommittee, led by Arlen Specter, held a one-day hearing late last month in nearby Johnstown. Invited to testify, the rescued miners told the members that Quecreek management had suspected they were getting close to the abandoned, flooded tunnels next door. Warning signs, the men said, were overlooked.

That day, a Pittsburgh lawyer retained by seven of the nine said he might file suit against Quecreek's owners, an amalgam of interlocking firms.

"Naturally, this is a difficult thing," said Howard Messer, the attorney. "You've got to expect the [managers] are putting a spin out there that whatever we're doing is going to cost the community jobs. The 'economic scare tactic,' I call it."

But the scare feels real to the three dozen men and women still working Quecreek. And when they point fingers, it's not at their employer.

The rescued miners "should just be happy that they're alive, that we saved them," said Greg Walker, who also had manned the pumps. "They should get on with life, get a job. You can't expect someone to keep handing you money, day after day, for the rest of your life."

Said Robert Bence, a shift foreman: "They'd have drowned instantly without what we did."

As for the rescued men, some won't talk to reporters at all. Even the most voluble have little to say publicly on the rifts that have opened in Somerset.

"You're always going to have ignorant people or mean people. It's how life is. We're trying to ignore it the best we can."

This week, their book - an as-told-to effort titled Our Story: 77 Hours that Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith (Hyperion) - will surface in stores, signaling the start of a promotional tour that will put them on Oprah, Good Morning America and Live With Regis & Kelly. People, Ladies' Home Journal and Good Housekeeping are paying homage; Vanity Fair called out star shooter Annie Leibovitz for their portrait.

Between stops, the miners will motivate corporate audiences, such as Microsoft, with inspiring messages of teamwork.

The blitz culminates Nov. 24, when ABC/Disney will air The Pennsylvania Miners' Story, an insider account for which the men were paid $150,000 each.

It opens with the Quecreek Nine about to start their fateful shift. It ends at that perfect moment when they emerged from the earth alive, which was really not the end at all.

During the three days they were trapped, the miners were so sure they would die that they tied themselves together with steel cable, the easier to recover their bodies. They wrote good-byes on cardboard scraps by the light of fading headlamps. And they wondered how big the story would be.

No sooner were they above ground than the media calls began, as many as 200 a day. The men balked at the spotlight.

"I'm not looking for no glory," stated 52-year-old John Unger at their first news conference, and his compatriots agreed.

No matter. Like the woman who spotted Mayhugh in a Maryland department store, hugged him, stuck $100 in his hand, and ran out crying before he could stop her - glory would hunt them down. And hang on.

On a bright October afternoon, Unger and Dennis Hall, 49, were at the rescue site, getting ready to sign souvenirs for a throng of college students from Altoona.

More than 10,000 people have visited this unremarkable, weedy patch of Bill Arnold's dairy farm, where a metal grate covers The Hole. Many have made it a dual pilgrimage, with a stop at another field nine miles from here - where United Flight 93 crashed on 9/11.

Until recently, it cost $3 a pop for admission to the Arnold farm. In the barn, Quecreek memorabilia - photo books, sweatshirts, and tape measures (all less than $20) with slogans: "We Raise Miners" and "Our Best Crop Ever."

"People literally take gravel from our driveway as mementoes," Arnold said. "I hate to say it's holy ground, but it almost feels that way."

When rescued miners stop by, as they do from time to time, tourists sit at picnic tables and reverently lean in to listen.

"It changed me, in ways I haven't figured out yet," Unger told one crowd. "I do know now that if you put your faith in God, it will work out. There was a time in my life when I wasn't convinced of that."

The media - they change you, too, he said, calling the reporters who have swarmed Somerset "relentless." A recent story in a major newspaper revealed that some of the men were seeing counselors and taking antidepressants.

The miners traded an uncomfortable glance. "I guess the company had the wrong map," Hall answered. "That's what was wrong."

Unger - wearing a worn hat with the logo of Quecreek's operator, Black Wolf Coal - tread more softly.

"Mistakes were made. Nobody knows who made them," he said, moving right along toward the autograph part.

The fourth man out, Unger scrawled "#4" on each souvenir. Hall signed a cap - his fans get a "#7" - with the zeal of a hassled Hollywood star, noting, "This hoopla, it's tiring."

When a reporter approached, the two pretended, fleetingly, to be tourists. "Your miners are back that-away," Hall said, gesturing over his shoulder.

It was getting close to 2 p.m. In the old days, all nine would have been heading for the mine to start their shift. Now on workers' comp, they stay busy with family or hunting. Mayhugh cuts firewood and works out.

Hall and Unger lingered to watch buses roll in and out and to look around the barn shop that markets their nightmare.

Then, in no particular rush, they said good-bye to the Arnolds, hugged each other, and took off in their pickups.

Five hours later, Unger and Hall were sitting on folding chairs at the Ramada Inn, waiting for the start of yet another Quecreek hearing - the imposingly named Governor's Commission on Abandoned Mine Voids and Mine Safety.

Somerset's largest hotel had advertised the big event with a marquee message: "Welcome PA DEP and Howard Messer, Attorney at Law."

The latter, representing Unger, Hall, and five other rescued miners, lived up to the billing.

The mine was sopping wet before the accident, Messer told the 10 panel members from the Department of Environmental Protection. The roof was "sloppy" and dangerous. Critical safety equipment was not kept on site. His clients, he said, were not given mine maps, nor were they told that adjacent tunnels were filled with water.

A handful of Quecreek workers in the back snorted at each charge. They rocked forward in their chairs and muttered, "Bulls-" and "That's a lie."

Messer forged on. "The mistakes here were the mistakes of men," he said, and warned that the state is ill-advised to take coal companies "at their word."

"We tell them, 'Don't lie to us,' and hopefully they don't. We tell them to give us all the information, and hopefully they do."

In the past, Quecreek's owners have denied every claim Messer was making, but tonight they were not at the lectern.

Leroy Lepley, who had helped with the rescue, took their defense upon himself. At the first chance for comment, he sprang from his chair, and unloaded.

"I've been hearing a lot of garbage tonight," he said. "Black Wolf this, Black Wolf that. They never broke no laws."

The culprit, he said, was a bad mine map that had fooled everyone into thinking they were a long way from breaching a wall. As one state investigation already had found, the correct map was in a storage drawer at the Windber Coal Heritage Center 30 miles away.

"Look, these guys should get millions of dollars for what they went through," he blurted into the microphone, then sat back down for good.

It is safe to say that most people in Somerset would have preferred a Disney ending, in which old pals could have gone to Hollywood and gotten something for their suffering, where everyone could have basked in the glow of an impossible save - and where everything could then go back to the way it was before, only better.

Conventional coal-town wisdom held that the accident, and the life-debts accrued in it, would bring everyone closer.

Joe Kostyk was among nine men who escaped the mine before rushing water could trap them - only because Dennis Hall had warned them by the mine's phone system of the deluge coming.

"They went through hell. I wouldn't begrudge them nothing," said Kostyk, but adding, "There's an awful lot of finger-pointing going on."

Bence, the Quecreek foreman, laments the distance between old friends. "It seems like we're a world apart," he said.

The rescued miners say they are just as disillusioned. Mayhugh talks of wanting "my own life back," and Hall of "trying to clear my head, get normal."

guess their fifteen minutes of fame is over.Now the reality of law suits and a struggle for jobs has turned folks agaisnt each other.Such a shame.

This happened with the rescuers and officials who saved the little boy who was trapped in a well in Texas. The attention and $$$ bastardized the honor and respect that was due the rescuers, and the money and attention did a number on the people and the community involved. Sad to see it happening again.

Messer forged on. "The mistakes here were the mistakes of men," he said, and warned that the state is ill-advised to take coal companies "at their word."

Here's the two-headed snake that needs to be defanged.

Damned trial lawyers who demand that somebody must be held accountable for all of life's imperfections and risks, even if they have to fabricate the scenario with imaginative 20/20 hindsight.

"fabricate the scenario with imaginative 20/20 hindsight."

A wonderful turn of phrase which accurately states what plaintiffs' lawyers do as they slime their way through the civil court.

I'm always slightly amazed when a nosy reporter writes a story about a community swamped by nosy reporters.

And, frankly, I don't get the near-worship angle of this. Flight 93 is another story. But, in this one, the folks who *freed* the miners are every bit as much the heroes as the folks who were trapped.

I guess when piles of money and tv appearances atart being tossed around, jealousy is bound to happen.

Any negligence that is uncovered needs to be dealth with or else we could end up with the extreme as in Red communist China, where hundreds of miners die each and every year. There's a ditch on both sides, but negligence leading to these horrible situations must be dealt with. And until tort reform is a reality, these situations will be extremely unfortunate...in the extreme such as this. If my brother were killed in a mining accident due to neglect, no court in the world would protect the guilty.

Damned trial lawyers who demand that somebody must be held accountable for all of life's imperfections and risks...

I remember the night of the rescue quite well. There was Geraldo Rivera spouting off about who might be responsible and who might get slapped with a lawsuit, and all before even the first miner was brought to the surface.

I do my best to ignore Jerry Rivers,
but if memory serves, he attended law school.
It is no wonder he's such a snake.

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