W.Va. families want memorial to '72 mine disaster - WVVA TV Bluefield Beckley WV News, Weather and Sports

W.Va. families want memorial to '72 mine disaster

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BLACKSVILLE, W.Va. (AP) -- Forty years after a West Virginia coal mine fire killed nine men, relatives are trying to get a memorial for the victims.

Investigators determined that machinery being moved at Blacksville No. 1 snagged an electrical wire and sparked the fire July 22, 1972.

The Dominion Post says that among those killed was 23-year-old foreman Justin Beach.

His niece, Lena Glowacky, was 11 at the time but remembers the family's grief.

She's now trying to organize support for a monument to the men.

Also killed were Mount Morris, Pa., residents Terrence Stoneking and Frederick Phillips, and Morgantown residents Conrad Belt, Billy Murray, Roy Sisler, Roy Dalton, Kenneth Haynes and Robert Tressler.

Corbett Beach says it's time to remember his brother and the other sons, husbands and fathers who were lost.

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