A community of resilience: Sheppton dedicates park to miners, remembers mine disaster of ’63

SHEPPTON – Sixty-two years ago last month, a small village of a few hundred people midway between Shenandoah and Hazleton was thrust into the national spotlight as three miners were trapped beneath the surface of Green Mountain.

Henry “Hank” Throne, David Fellin, and Louis Bova became trapped when the Fellin Coal Co. deep mine between Sheppton and Oneida gave way on August 13, 1963.

They were “in complete darkness, more than 300 feet below ground,” East Union Township Supervisors Chairman Kyle Mummey said Sunday as the community paid tribute to the men through the establishment of a new community park.

“For the first five days of this tragedy, it was unknown if the men had survived,” Mummey said.

The incident attracted the attention of news media near and far, including the region’s newest outlet at the time, Shenandoah’s first and only local radio station, WMBT-AM.

Phil Margush, an engineer with Trans-Audio Corporation brought to the area from a sister station to help launch WMBT, was at the scene in the early days and lowered a microphone down a borehole into the mine, establishing contact with Throne and Fellin until their eventual rescue on August 27.

“After covering themselves in axle grease and donning a harness, both Henry Throne and David Fellin were hoisted to the surface,” Mummey said. “But Louis Bova was never found. We will forever remember his memory and sacrifice.”

“Their memory will and legacy will live forever in the hearts of everyone who lives in this great community,” Mummey said.

“It was more than a tragedy,” Dennis Antonelli, former supervisor, said. “It was a test of human endurance, faith, and strength of a town that refused to forget.”

Memories of ’63

Sunday’s dedication ceremony featured two special speakers: a family member of miner David Fellin and the last surviving member of the rescue party.

Carol Zelinsky, Fellin’s niece, recalled her uncle’s memory and said her family remembers and recognizes the disaster every year.

“Imagining what it would be like and how vicious that was for his wife, his family, and my mother, thinking that they’re down there and never coming up,” Zelinsky recalled.

“It’s something very personal to us,” she said.

She expressed a worry that the region’s mining legacy may be fading in the new generations.

“The young people don’t even know that we’re built on coal,” she surmised. “I think it’s important to uplift where we came from and what our foundation is and what makes us great.”

Ronnie Sando, 88, the last surviving member of the rescue party, said he felt “a presence other than ours” while the crew was working.

“We felt good that we got Dave and Hank out, but we felt sorry that we never got Louis Bova,” Sando said. “It’s still in my mind, I think about it at least once a week.”

He was at the mine every day during the rescue effort.

County Commissioner Barron “Boots” Hetherington was an elementary schooler in Ringtown at the time, between 4th and 5th grades.

“We celebrated the 4th of July with fireworks and all that great stuff and, a couple weeks later, we heard about the situation in Sheppton where the miners were trapped underground,” Hetherington recalled. “Back in those days, we were starting to do a lot of strip mining, but there was still a lot of deep shaft mining going on, and that was a dangerous occupation.”

“If you look at the history of anthracite, a lot of folks were lost in deep shaft mining,” he said.

“All of a sudden, Sheppton was on the map,” Hetherington added. “You watched Huntley-Brinkley at night, Walter Cronkite, the news about these trapped miners and these great people that got together, and thought outside the box, brought in new technology, got down to them, got water and air to them, and then got them out, was just amazing. We were so proud to hear about them getting out.”

Hetherington called the park’s space at Centre Street and Cranberry Alley a “great location.”

“Any time you drive up to Hazleton or coming home again, you’re going to go past it, visitors will see it,” Hetherington said. “What better place to be able to take a piece of blighted property, tear it down, reclaim it and honor these three men.”

‘A dream and a vision’

“Almost six years ago, Chairman Antonelli, Mr. [Dominic] Yanuzzi and I stood on this very site with a dream and a vision,” Mummey said.

The group envisioned a memorial park commemorating the sacrifice of the three miners.

“As a former supervisor, I carried a vision, a vision that one day, East Union Township would have a place where people could come, not just to remember the miners who were trapped beneath the Earth, but to reflect on the resilience that defines our community.”

“That vision stood on the shoulders of Henry Throne and David Fellin who survived the unimaginable, and of Louis Bova, whose memory we carry,” he said.

He described the park as a place where “stories will be told, where children will ask question and we will answer with truth and pride.”

Blighted properties were razed with the help of Schuylkill County, but, “we still lacked one critical element of the project: funding.”

Cue Mericle Commercial Real Estate in what Mummey called a public-private partnership.

Mericle offered to install the park at no cost to the township earlier this year and work began in the spring, wrapping up in the summertime.

Robert Gabardi, president of the Sheppton-Oneida Volunteer Fire Co., presented a plaque for the park dedicated to the first responders, personnel, and all other volunteers assisting in the rescue effort.

The Shenandoah Sentinel was the ONLY news source at Sunday morning’s dedication ceremony of the Sheppton Miners Commons. If you value LOCAL reporting from a LOCAL news source, PLEASE consider pitching in via Patreon or Buy Me A Coffee.

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