Wednesday, November 30, 2005
550 Why did the miners die?
Next month, Wyoming newspaper people will be honored with a number of awards at the Wyoming Press Association. In my 40-year newspaper career, the staff of my papers received a great many state and national awards for excellence in journalism.
But the best award wasn’t given to us at a newspaper convention.
The best trophy was an item a group of old uranium miners gave me after writing editorials and stories in 1990 that made a real difference in the Fremont County community.
This story was about mine safety. And it concerned how a lot of men were dying unnecessarily 15 years ago in Wyoming. With our state again leading the nation in mining plus all the other mineral development, perhaps a look back at a workplace safety issue would make sense. The lessons learned from this tragedy can be applied in our state today.
Let’s start this story with the following copy, which was part of an editorial that I wrote back in those days to kick off the series:
“Try to imagine how it must feel to be on your deathbed knowing that your widow and children are going to live difficult lives without you. Try to imagine going to your grave with that feeling in your heart.
“That is exactly what has happened in the case of more than 40 Fremont County men who have died prematurely of lung cancer. These men died terrible deaths as they gradually lost their ability to breathe. Many left young families with children still in school and their widows left to be both mother and father to these kids.
“Try to imagine the pain these men felt, as they died young, knowing their wives and kids would lead emptier lives because their fathers were not there earning regular paychecks. In many cases, the illnesses sapped both the financial and emotional resources of these families to the breaking point.
“Try to imagine what it must have felt like to have been told you should not have been smoking, when most everyone around you smoked. And you thought this assumed harmless habit is what caused the lung cancer, not the radon gases you breathed as an underground uranium miner. Try to imagine fatherless children and husbandless wives coping with the loss of the heads of their families. Imagine the sense of loss these people lived with through the loss of a loved one at a premature age.
“And finally as a dying miner, try to imagine your frustration when you learn that there might be some relief available except that proof is necessary and most of the records have been destroyed. Imagine how you would feel when you find out you have been abandoned and now you will die.”
To those of us who have been observers of this situation, those of us who never descended into a hot, dusty, dangerous uranium mine, the whole scenario listed above may seem surreal. But to those miners and their families, the feelings described here are very real.
Many of the survivors of these dead miners are bitter. All are disappointed. Every one is sorrowful. All that hurt was unnecessary. They died because of a lack of safety precautions.
This country has shown it has a big heart for people who have been wronged. This is especially true when it can be argued that the government was partially at fault.
Our series called Why Did The Miners Die called attention to the odd type of cancer that was killing local men 20 years after they had descended into dangerous uranium mines.
Leading the charge was the late Mildred Olson, a Lander widow, whose husband “Digger” had died in his 40s from complications of cancer.
She claimed that his body was so radioactive that grass wouldn’t grow on his grave. She said tests on his bones showed he had 14 times the normal radiation in his body. He died a terrible death and left four small kids for Mildred to raise.
Her battle, our newspaper series and the efforts by former U. S. Sen. Al Simpson resulted in Congress passing a bill, signed by President George H. W. Bush that offered a national apology to the men and paid them each $100,000 in benefits. Mrs. Olson was the second person to receive such a check and many others have been paid since.
Our articles won a special merit award from the Wyoming Press Association and a national award for investigative reporting. Sen. Simpson wrote a letter of nomination for the series for a Pulitzer Prize.
At a picnic held by former uranium miners in Riverton to celebrate the passage of the bill, the miners presented me with an old miner’s helmet signed by all the miners or their widows.
And out of more than 200 state and national awards won by our newspaper staffs over 35 years, we are most proud of that simple, old, battered helmet.
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