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Coal Miner's
Granddaughter

West Bloomfield author tells the story of a 1909
mine disaster in her grandfather's town.

LORI WEISS

Special to the Jewish News

1

t was a story that captured the
nation — nine coal miners
trapped under the earth in
Somerset, Pa.
Their families, powerless to do any-
thing but pray, were joined by mil-
lions who held their breath, hoping
that somehow the men would escape
the Black Wolf Coal Co.'s Quecreek
mine alive.
In West Bloomfield, in what seems
to be a world away, Karen Tintori
Katz watched nervously, as if she'd
witnessed a scene like this before.
The sounds, the tears, the sheer ter-
ror haunted her, as if the story she'd
been researching and writing for the
last 10 years was suddenly coming to
life. One hundred years later, it all
seemed to be happening again.
In a search of her family's roots,
Tintori Katz had begun a genealogical
journey that led her to Cherry, Ill., the
scene of the 1909 mine disaster that
took the lives of 259 of the town's 500
men. Her research was personal, a
quest to find out more about the
grandfather she never knew, who
came from Italy as had many
Cherry residents in hopes of creat-
ing a better life for their families.
But as the story began to unfold,
she knew it was one that had to be
told.
"The more I read about the
disaster, the more I was taken
by the story behind it," she
said. It became like a detec-
tive hunt. While I'm trying
to find out where my
grandfather fit in, I'm
uncovering this story of
tragedy. The writer in me
is saying, 'Oh, my
God!'"
Tintori Katz, who has
a background in jour-
nalism and a successful
career as a romance novel-
ist, approached her agent
with the idea of telling the Cherry

story the way Truman Capote wrote In
Cold Blood, as a factual story written
with a novelist's twist.
Little did she know that just weeks
before its publication, a similar situa-
tion would grasp the world's attention.
"My heart was in my throat watch-
ing what was going on," she said.
"When the rescuers stopped hearing
tapping, I thought the miners hadn't
made it. That's what happened in
Cherry — first they heard tapping,
then it just stopped.
'As I watched the yellow capsule
come up, I kept thinking about how
they tried to save the men of Cherry;
with a whiskey barrel these brave men
went down, one leg in and one leg out.
"The Quecreek miners had written
the same kind of farewell letters to
their families that I found from 1909,
and [had] banded together vowing to
live and die as one. I was floored that
in nearly a century, not much had
changed."

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GRANDDAUGHTER on page 92

Karen Tintori Katz:
A search for her
family roots led
her to the scene
of a 1909 mine
disaster that
took the lives
of 259 men.

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