There’s no denying that the past few weeks have been rough for Americans. Stock market schizophrenia, ongoing corporate ethics scandals, young girls kidnapped and murdered and raging wildfires dominated the headlines. We were certainly starved for a bit of good news. Thankfully, it came over the weekend in the form of nine, living, breathing blue-collar coal miners and the hundreds of everyday heroes who saved their lives.
You have to admit, hope seemed lost, particularly when the tapping ceased and the drill bit used to bore a rescue shaft broke, causing a long and agonizing delay. No doubt, those old enough to remember the 1961 Jimmy Dean classic "Big Bad John" were reminded of the haunting lyrics "… twenty men scrambled from a would-be grave. Now there’s only one left down there to save — Big John. With jacks and timbers they started back down. Then came that rumble way down in the ground …. everyone knew it was the end of the line for Big John."
Even those less seasoned will remember the tragic fate of the 118 sailors aboard the Russian submarine Kursk who perished, trapped 350 feet underwater in the Berents Sea in August of 2000. There, too, the tapping ceased. As the world held its collective breath, rescue crews ran out of time when the lack of money and horrific weather teamed up to produce a tragically different outcome.
In Pennsylvania the rescue effort was undertaken with clockwork precision. Working tirelessly, without panic or fear, fellow coal miners — with grim determination etched on their faces — set about to free their co-workers. Each man above ground understood that it could easily have been him waiting in the darkness 240 feet below the earth. Speculative news reports wondered out loud when the effort would be deemed a "recovery" rather than a rescue. Seventy-seven hours passed between the moment when 60 million gallons of water filled the mineshaft (following the accidental drilling of an adjacent abandoned mine) and the liberation of nine soggy, soot-covered men.
At the heart of this saga are everyday people — the kind of guys who kiss their wives and head off to work in some of the most dangerous jobs in our country. This time, thankfully, there’s a happy ending.
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