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Black
Monday - a true story (miners
trapped in a coal mines for 10 days) Donnegan # 8
Jennings,
my husband was 18 years old when he started working in the coal mines.
He was 30 when it happened, trapped underground for 10 days.
May
6, 1968 Monday. They called it
“Black Monday”. That is
what Sherman Drum called his book.
Well,
Jennings was on the day shift, 10 in the bunch that Jennings was in. They got 10 out in 5 days and the other 10 were still
trapped. Four were killed and 6 got out alive.
They cut into an old mines and water came in.
Jennings was in the one where 4 died, Eliah Walkup, Renick McClung and
two with last names Todd and Burdette. The
ones who got out alive Joe Moore, Larry Lynch, Martin and Jennings Lilly,
Fitzwater and Frank Scarbro (the preacher, he smote the water, and it cleared
up, the water was stagnate and he smote it (like in the Bible) so they could
drink it. They had no food for 10
days.
When
they first cut into it, (the old mines), they got braddish cloth and made a tent
6’ x 4’, back up out of the way where the water had worked out.
Moore (last name) had just come back to work, he had been off with the
flue, so Jennings gave him his coat, he was afraid he would take pneumonia.
They had their lights and watches, so they could tell time.
They had no communication. The
first bunch trapped in there, they put food down to them.
They put food down to Jennings and them but they didn’t get it, they
were drilling in the wrong places. They
had scuba divers in, they pumped the water for 10 days.
When
I asked Barbara how she found out,
She told me a man who worked up there, Fox,
not at Donnegan’s #8 but up there in that area came by that evening.
Jennings was on the day shift. It
was about 3 pm. We didn’t have a
telephone at that time. It was on
the news.
We went up there and sat
and waited and watched, everybody in the country was there.
They had the Red Cross in and they had food. This was a union mine.
Jennings
operated a miner, a continuously miner, but his was broke down that day and
Eliah Walkup was running the miner that cut in, the map was wrong and there was
water because it was on Hominy Falls Creek.
Jeff and Cathy, 2 of our kids, were in school. Jeff
was in the 1st grade and Cathy, the 2nd grade.
The baby was 18 months old.
Jeff
said that Daddy was not dead, he always told him not to panic when anything
happened like that. Loretta Walker
was a cook at the school and she told Barbara what Jeff had said and that he had
so much faith for a little boy.
I
went to church but Jennings didn’t. Joe
Fitzwater made a preacher when he came out and he wasn’t saved when he went in
there.
They had one sandwich they
divided between 6 men. There was a
little country store up the road. Earl
Rader ran it and Jennings said that he could see the Long Horn Cheese and the
hams. He said that after they went
without food for so long, they didn’t get hungry.
When he came out he was skinny.
We
live on the homeplace. There was
90 acres, we got 50.
Governor
Hulett Smith came and there was a
play about it. I went to see it but it wasn’t really like it happened.
They
were having prayer meetings day and night at the mines and all the churches.
Jennings had bought Cathy a pair of red cowboy boots and when she was
told about her Daddy she went and got those boots and put them on.
My daddy went up there every day. They
got them out about 4:30 in the morning. It
got so cold and rainy I couldn’t go every day but daddy went.
He died in 1977.
Jennings
worked in the mines until 1985. He
is disabled. He had to have his back operated on 2 times.
He has black lung. He had to quit work when he was 47 (2 back operations) he is
63 years old now. He has to use an
inhaler and breathing machine because of the black lung. He doesn’t have to be on oxygen.
The
called it "the Miracle of Hominy Falls".
Jennings
had a bunch of coon hounds and Stanton Wiseman (now dead) lived in town but he
came everyday and brought meat and fed the dogs.
I didn’t know anything about feeding the dogs.
He must of had 5 or 6 dogs.
One
miner said that Jennings would not go back in the mines but he did.
He went back in and got that continuously miner out where the dead people
lay for 10 days.
They kept them in
Sacred Heart Hospital overnight. He
was off from work for a month. One
of the bosses told Jennings he would not have to run the miner anymore but when
he went back to work they told him he did.
So he quit and went to a nonunion mine.
He would have been better off if he had stayed with the union.
We would have had more benefits.
end
of interview.
footnote:
after further research, Jennings's daughter told me the men were in an air
pocket, had the
drill hit home, the men would have drown. Also, when rescued, the
men had to walk out holding their heads above the water.
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