Dorothy Svitesic remembers firsthand the Harmar Mine and the men who earned a living picking and shoveling, stooping and sweating, to bring out the coal.

She is passionate about the miners' history, their camaraderie and their struggles, and she loves to celebrate the coal mining heritage of the Harmarville area.

"This is about keeping their stories alive -- all so they're not forgotten," said Svitesic, 74, of Springdale Borough.

Every five years or so, she helps plan a picnic -- like the one scheduled Saturday -- for those who worked in the mine and their families. In previous years, 500 people have shown up.

In between picnics, she adds a story here and there to a book she began compiling 20 years ago, "Our Coal Mining Heritage, Harmarville PA." She and her daughter, Jeanne Cecil, of West View, have been rushing to get the third edition printed in time for the picnic. Cecil said it has grown from stories written on six sheets of paper to more than 230 pages.

"It started as a personal thing. At the first picnic, I noticed the guys laughing, telling stories. They were imitating all the accents," Svitesic said, referring to the varied nationalities of the people who emigrated here to work in the mines.

"They told stories about the bosses, about the town, about the company store. I started to interview the men on tape. I recorded their stories. I tried to keep the flavor of the person speaking. The book just got bigger and bigger."

Svitesic doesn't mean to imply that life in the mines and mining towns was jolly. Her father and brother worked in the mine. She remembers the dirt and the dust. "I remember the men coughing, spitting up from the black lung.

"I remember the mine as a big black hole. We weren't allowed to go anywhere near it," she said of the mine entrance and the rail tracks that ran down to a canal off the Allegheny River, where heavy barges waited.

Another brother worked the tipple, the machinery that "tipped" the rail cars to dump coal into the barges. "My dad maneuvered to get him that job. My dad didn't want another son going underground. It was so dangerous. Every time the mine whistle signaled there had been an accident, we all sat and waited. We held our breath till we knew it was OK."

Sometimes, the mines drew national attention. Svitesic has recorded those stories, too.

"We had so many things happen here -- accidents, explosions. Eleanor Roosevelt came here. She came here and toured when the miners' families were living in just tar paper shacks."

Joseph "Sonny" Fogle Jr. was new to the mine in 1948 when an explosion killed three men. "I worked there from 1947 until they shut it down in 1980. When I started in '47, we still used a pick and shovel for all the work," said Fogle, 77, of Springdale Township.

The Harmar Mine was operated by The Wheeling Steel Co. and employed 1,000 to 1,200 men at its heyday, Fogle said. "We worked in shifts around the clock, five days a week."

He said he doesn't know how many tons of coal came out of the mine, but he can measure production in barges filled per day. "We used to swim in the river from the canal bridge. The barges were lined up on the river there. I would say they loaded three barges a day."

Now, Bruster's Ice Cream and Advance Auto Parts stores sit closest to the site. Drivers on Guys Run Road, just up the hill from Freeport Road, can see the vertical concrete slabs that marked the entrance.

"If you look, you can see where it was. And there was the wash house and the office," Svitesic said, panning across the slope as if the buildings still stood. Her girlhood home was a bit farther up Guys Run Road.

The site has a drive and a gate chained shut. Most of the lot is covered with tall weeds, and the concrete is scribbled with graffiti. A canal that winds from the river to the site goes almost unnoticed in the underbrush.

On Saturday, Svitesic will greet friends from as far away as California and North Carolina. She doubts the crowd will be anywhere close to 500 people, however.

"The mine closed and people moved away. Families scattered. A lot of the men who worked in the mine have died. There aren't so many any more," she said.

Fogle loves the picnic and he loves the book. "Oh, yes, I have all three editions. I buy one every time it comes out," he said.

"It's all stories about honest people. There was nobody rich in that town, but I never met more honest people in my life."

The Harmar Mine Picnic will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at Syria Mosque Pavilion, 5239 Brownsville Road, Cheswick. Admission is $12. For reservations, call 724-274-8062, 724-274-8141 or 412 828-2339.

"Our Coal Mining Heritage, Harmarville PA" is published by John Towle, owner of Aspinwall Bookshop, 1 Brilliant Ave., Aspinwall, where the book is available.