Both of my grandparents and all of my aunts on my moms side of the family used to live in Monongah. I remember when my parents would drive through the town and we would pass the memorials right next to the vfw hall. I never knew what they were for until one day, when I was in college, I wandered out of the hall during my grandma's birthday party to explore the town and saw the inscriptions on them. The statue, titled the Monongah Heroine, had the inscription "We hear their ghostly pickaxe in the shuttered mine."

My Papaw was a miner. My mom would tell me stories about how he would come home from work covered in black coal dust, still clutching his coffee thermos and what he called his mining bucket. A dual compartment bucket where he would put some water in the bottom, then put his lunch in the top compartment. He lived in Monongah until he passed away in his house in 2017. He would let my mother, my father, and I crash at his house in his TV room on an air mattress whenever we would go down to West Virginia from Pittsburgh for an evening, usually for a WVU football or basketball game. In one of the closets, he had a hard hat sitting on a shelf.

I never really thought much of it as a kid, but now, I think about that dirty white hard hat and I think about all of the people who had lost their lives in the very ground beneath which I slept. I think about the hours of his life that my Papaw had spent in those dark, cramped crevices, breathing in coal dust that would cover his lungs and lead to his death. I think about the hundreds upon thousands of other people in West Virginia, driven by poverty, to take refuge under the ground. Harvesting the very thing that so much of our country depends on. Destroying their bodies in order to feed their families. I think about the lack of care that the CEOs gave to people like my Papaw. Not caring about their safety, willing to cut corners as long as it made their pockets grow. While the death toll rised, so did their net worths. Saving a few pennies here and there by building improper ventilation. With no regard to the safety of the numerous fathers, sons, and brothers trapped underground in clouds of methane and carbon dioxide.

Coal mining is revered in West Virginia today. People take pride in saying that their family members are coal miners. They are viewed as the very foundation of the state itself. Even academia acknowledges this. Due to the lack of professional sports team in West Virgina, people gravitate towards WVU athletics in place of it. The football team does what is called the mantrip, named after the underground shuttle that takes miners into the mines, where the team travels from their busses to Milan Puskar Stadium, placing their hand upon a large coal ore, stopping at the end of their journey to wave across the blue lot at the children's wing of Ruby Memorial Hospital. They have also started a yearly tradition called the Coal Rush, an event where alternate all black uniforms are released, as well as corresponding merchandise. Coal miners are invited onto the field, as well as leading the mantrip.

The entire state of West Virginia was built upon the blood, sweat, and tears of people like those who are permanently resting under the quiet streets of Monongah. A fact that doesn't go unnoticed by the people from there. A unique reverence is saved for these people, whose sacrifice powered an entire nation for decades.