Word: frankfort
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Declaiming last week before a Senate hearing on mine safety, John L. Lewis dealt with the killing and maiming of his United Mine Workers in such disasters as the recent underground explosion at West Frankfort (Ill.), where 119 men lost their lives,† The shaggy eyebrows quivered with scorn, the spellbinding voice rolled out pedantic invective (a certain mine operator, he rumbled, was "retromingent"), as the U.M.W.'s president got to his main point: "the abominable and barbaric Taft-Hartley Law." Until Congress repealed it, said Lewis, the U.M.W. would be hampered in its efforts to make the mines...
Along with dozens of federal and state inspectors who had come to West Frankfort, Ill. to investigate the pre-Christmas coal-mine blast which killed 119 miners was grizzled old John L. Lewis. He put on a helmet, headlight and work clothes for a personal underground inspection. Eight hours later, soot-streaked and weary, he came to the surface, where photographers got a picture that would show other union miners that the Boss still knows his way around the pits...
Vigil in the Washhouse. Stumbling, black-faced, from the elevator to the safety of the concrete washhouse, most said only: "This is a bad one." In nearby West Frankfort (pop. 11,251), the news spread fast. In the high-school gymnasium, the loudspeaker broke urgently through the cheers of the basketball fans: "Dr. Barnett, please report to the New Orient mine." Within minutes, the gym was emptying and scores of automobiles were heading past West Frankfort's bright blaze of Christmas lights to Illinois Highway 37 and the turnoff to the mine...
...night wore on, state police set up roadblocks, and stopped cars to allow free access to ambulances, and mine-rescue crews. Visitors were turned back. But West Frankfort's terrified wives and mothers simply left the road, climbed fences, and walked across frozen fields. Some wore only nightgowns, slippers and coats. Some brought children. They walked into the cold, barren-walled washhouse, silent and white-faced. They looked up at their men's street clothes, hanging from ceiling ropes. They waited...
...West Frankfort was not listening to the sound of argument. On Christmas Eve, 1951, it devoted itself to the dead, who waited on tarpaulin sheets on the floor of the junior high-school gymnasium, to be recognized and bidden farewell...