Community Holds Together As Week Turns Bleak
Another week of devastating news shook the communities of Emery and Carbon counties and was met with an outpouring of love for those who are suffering.
As a sixth bore hole revealed no sign of life and the temporary closure of the Tower mine in Carbon County sent almost 200 miners to the unemployment lines, the community continued to rally to help in any way that it could.
As news came on Sunday that a seventh hole would be drilled and a special robotic camera would be lowered into earlier holes to search for signs of the miners it offered a small glimmer of hope for families as other miner families learned that Crandall Canyon co-owner Robert Murray had decided to temporarily close Tower mine due to safety concerns.
The news came at the end of a week that had started to become filled with heated accusations from miners’ families that enough wasn’t being done to find the lost miners, especially when Murray announced earlier in the week of his intention to seal the mine.
But even as lawyers began to line up on either side of the argument, the communities continued an amazing embrace of the miners’ families that extended across the nation.
On Aug. 24 Helper City held a huge fundraiser for the miners’ families, followed by another fundraiser at Emery High School on Aug. 25, for a night of country music, cowboy poetry and a silent auction.
At Zions Bank an account set up for people to donate to the families of the six lost miners has seen an outpouring of love from across the nation.
“It’s just amazing,” said Jo`el Hatch, branch manager of Zions Bank for Hutington and Castle Dale.
On Friday alone there had been 23 deposits for the six lost miners and another 10 deposits for the rescuers. Zions Bank has also deposited $5,000 into accounts for each of the lost six miners, the three rescuers that were killed and the six rescuers that were injured.
At the Zions Bank in Huntington a flood of cards have come with the donations and workers there are collecting them to put on a bulletin board. The cards, some written on slips of paper, some typed, others scrawled on whatever was available, are heartfelt and heart wrenching in their sincerity.
“So many of them are from other miners’ families; They are just really touching,” Hatch said. “It makes you really proud to be a part of this community, to see people open up their hearts the way they have.”
Peach Days Plans Move Forward
James L. Davis
Ferron City has decided to move forward with plans for this year’s Peach Days Celebration after briefly considering canceling the event or scaling it back in light of the tragedies that have shook the Emery County community in the past month.
During the Aug. 23 Ferron City Council meeting councilperson Jo Sansevero and Mayor Gil Conover said they had struggled with whether the city celebration was appropriate with the tragedy of the Crandall Canyon Mine disaster so all encompassing to the community.
During the meeting Sansevero said that while her first inclination was to cancel the event, in talking to the community she had changed her mind.
“In talking to other people they all indicted that we should have the Peach Days,” Sansevero said.
Council person Joe Trenery agreed to Sansevero’s sentiment. “We need to have it. They need some release,” he said.
“Let’s go full throttle ahead then,” Conover said.
To help the families of the lost miners and killed rescuers, some of the normal events for Peach Days will become fund raisers this year. The dinner at the park on Sept. 7 from 6-8 p.m. will be a fundraiser, as will the Sept. 8 breakfast at the Old Church Park. The golf tournament will also serve as a fundraiser and the council discussed having donations for the miners’ families accepted during the Peach Blossom Pageant Aug. 30 at 6 p.m. at the Emery High School.
Coal miners are to be the honored citizens during the Sept. 8 parade at 10 a.m. and they are invited to ride in Ferron City fire trucks to allow the community to show their appreciation for their efforts.
Peach Days, with a theme of People Everywhere Are Coming Home, begins on Sept. 4 with a Parade Your Pet Pet show at the mayor’s park at 6 p.m. and culminates on Spet. 8, with breakfast, a parade, golf tournament, family fun day, soap box derby, horse races a demolition derby and a dance, among other things.
Riding with a Cause
James L. Davis
Paul Mager has driven down the retirement highway once already. It was a short trip. Thirty-five days after retiring as the shop supervisor for the Emery County Road Department in 2000 he went back to work, this time driving cross country for Reed Hurst Trucking.
Driving truck allowed his wife, Faye, to travel with him and the two were gone for months at a time on the road, coming home long enough to check on the house, but it wasn’t exactly a relaxing, cruising drive being behind the wheel of a big rig.
“There’s no relaxing to it,” Paul said.
After a few years of driving cross country Faye began to feel poorly and asked Paul to get a job closer to home, which led him to driving local coal haul routes for Nielson Construction. He’s been driving there ever since, but seemingly getting no closer to that retirement highway he had experienced so briefly.
But today Paul, 69, has a new ride, a major item in his retirement toy collection that he and Faye, 63, plan to take full advantage of, someday. Part motorcycle, part Volkswagen, his new ride draws stares of the curious when they climb aboard with their dog Cuddles happily secured in a dog taxi and head out for the open road from their home in Price.
The trike has been a project for the former mechanic that he has tinkered with for some time and comes from a love of motorcycles that spans a lifetime.
“I was raised on motorcycles. My dad rode a bike when I was a kid,” Paul said. “We had a Kawasaki Voyager KZ 1300. It was a big brute that was fast, way too fast. I knew it was going to kill us if we kept it,” Paul said.
Later the two had a Honda Goldwing, but that motorcycle didn’t work out for the couple either.
“It was too big for us, at our ages. It was too much motorcycle for us,” Faye said.
With eight grown children, 26 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren, the couple might have let their motorcycle days slip away until one day when Paul happened to be listening to a Price radio station. Listening to KOAL’s Barter Bar he heard a woman who had called the buy-sell radio show to offer a trike for sale.
“She said it was ugly and the first $200 would take it,” Paul said. It just so happened that she was right, it was ugly, but he offered the first $200 and he brought the trike home anyway.
At that time the trike was little more than the back half of a Volkswagen drive train. The engine came as part of the deal but it wasn’t in the trike, which was just as well because Paul took his torch and went to work cutting on it.
With the trike under construction Paul heard of someone who had a Yamaha Venture Royale that he was looking to get rid of and Paul ended up trading him the motorcycle for a 44 Magnum.
Now he had a Volkswagen motor and drive train and a motorcycle, all the ingredients he needed.
“I added three feet between the two of them, welded it together and had my trike,” Paul said with a smile.
But building his trike wasn’t exactly that easy and the reason for that had nothing to do with his mechanical abilities and everything to do with his own health and the health of his wife.
Faye had already asked Paul to take a job closer to home because she wasn’t feeling well and her health continued to deteriorate.
“I had asked him to change jobs because I wasn’t feeling good, but I didn’t know why,” Faye said.
Her declining health was eventually found to be the result of an infection in her heart requiring a long road to recovery and while she was still on that road to recovery Paul’s own health began to fail.
Paul ended up in the hospital himself for gall bladder surgery. While recovering from that surgery he suffered from asthmatic bronchitis, which put him back in the hospital and resulted in a series of tests that ended up saving his life. Two blocked arteries were found in his own heart.
“He was kinda kicked,” Faye said.
With both of the Magers suffering from heart problems in the space of one year, the recoveries were slow and the mountain of medical bills were high. As he slowly got back on is feet again Paul started tinkering with his trike and by the time coal miners’ vacation came this past summer, providing him the opportunity to take some time off from hauling coal, Paul’s strength was back and the only thing left on his trike was a paint job.
Once it was finished he was finally able to climb aboard and give it a good ride and he was pleased with the results. “It runs beautifully,” he said, although he admits that riding a trike is different than riding a motorcycle. “It took some time to learn how to ride it. You want to lean it when you turn. It tried that and end up across the intersection.”
With the trike complete the couple, who will celebrate their 36th wedding anniversary in September, could just sit back and enjoy the ride, but they have other plans for their trike. They plan to use it to help spread the word about their faith.
“I want to use it as a witness for the Lord,” Paul said. As the assistant pastor at the Trinity Christian Center in Price, Paul’s trike and the interest it draws for passersby helps open doors for them to share their message of faith in Jesus Christ.
“I came from a life of being a functioning drunk and the grace of God delivered me from alcohol just like that,” Paul said.
“We know what He has done in our life and it has been awesome,” Faye said.
Healthy again and with their trike complete, the two may not be quite ready to ride down their retirement highway, but they’re close.
The only thing left was to come up with a name for their Volkswagen / Yamaha trike and with their faith, and a little help from a visiting pastor, they came up with just the right name for Paul’s creation, which he proudly pointed out.
“It’s called ‘Old Volks for Jesus,” he said with a grin. |
