Chris Murphy: “I rise to solemnly support House Concurrent Resolution 331 that mourns the loss of so many coal miners from the Sago and…”

“I rise to solemnly support House Concurrent Resolution 331 that mourns the loss of so many coal miners from the Sago and Alma mine disasters and, quite frankly, it is a time for us to remember so many other coal mining disasters. The victims as well as the rescue crews who fought bravely to get them to safety ought to be recognized in the aftermath of this tragedy. But now our deepest sympathies are with the families and friends whose lives have passed. I feel a special affinity to these miners, my own great-grandfather having been a coal miner in Pennsylvania, and while I was a student at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, I spent so much time working in towns and volunteer work in mining towns in West Virginia, among them being Mann, West Virginia where the great Buffalo Creek flood disaster hit when a dam from a coal mine collapsed and wiped out so many people in that town. It is a rough life for coal miners and coal mining towns, for the families, the wives and loved ones who sit and wait each time the elevator goes down into the shaft. The struggles and the hard scrabble life is so often immortalized in songs and folk songs over the years. And they are true, indeed, for the life is difficult for men and women who work in the mines and recognize the dangers and the constant safety that the mine operators must attend to.…”