Home >  Local News

Friday, May 30, 2003

By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Last July's rescue of nine men trapped in Somerset County's Quecreek Mine was celebrated in a made-for-television movie.

The incident also spawned hearings on whether mine procedures statewide were safe enough, and two weeks ago, lawsuits on whether procedures at Quecreek in particular were lacking.

Now, the momentum of Quecreek has reached further, spawning a nonprofit effort, announced yesterday, to bring scholarships and better health coverage to the people of the nation's fading coal towns.

"Quecreek brought this unrivaled media exposure," New Jersey public relations specialist Barbara Brown -- second cousin to rescued miner John Unger -- said yesterday. "The question was what can we do to harness all this energy."

The answer -- for Brown, Unger, other brainstormers and the other miners -- is Miracle Miners Community Foundation. It's an embryonic organization looking for nonprofit status and hoping to draw tens of thousands of people to Windber, a suburban Johnstown coal town 21 miles from Quecreek, for a weekend celebration and fund-raiser July 25-27.

"We want to give something back," Unger told a gathering in Windber yesterday.

For openers, Miracle Miners plans a festival of concerts and attractions to mark the first anniversary of the 3 1/2-day Quecreek ordeal. At the same time, Johnstown country music station WMTZ-FM 96.5, plans to air a 77-hour marathon recounting Quecreek and with recollections and poetry celebrating mining in general.

After the Windber celebration, Miracle Miners planners hope corporate donors will fund scholarships and health care in a process that planners still are working out.

"It's a process in evolution," said state Sen. John Wozniak, D-Johnstown, a supporter of the effort.

Coal once made towns like Windber boom. But its fade left the towns to struggle with thin opportunities for youth and underemployment that left its elders with minimal or no health insurance.

"Towns were broken and abandoned," said Brown, owner of Brown & Partners LLC in West Orange, N.J. "[The miners] wanted to try to do something to give back."

Miracle Miners is directing prospective donors to organizer Vivian Ahrens at 1-908-766-7463 or to Director Thom Hemeleski at 1-608-835-7173 to offer original music or poetry to the Windber celebration, or just ask questions about the effort. The group also has a Web site, still under construction, at www.miracleminer.org.