Sheppton Mine Disaster and Rescue, Sheppton, Schuylkill County

I really, really don't understand how it is November already. We turn the clocks back in a few days, and vote next week, and it just doesn't seem real. On the other hand, the store where I work has been selling Christmas decorations for the last few weeks already, so you could argue that my sense of time is a bit muddled. (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas stuff all crowds together. It's organized chaos at its most festive.)

But it is most certainly the start of November. If you don't already subscribe, you can find the latest issue of my monthly newsletter by clicking here.

Near the end of October, the bff Andrea and I had a day where we were both completely free, so we hopped in my car and took a very pleasant tour of some of our northern counties, enjoying the fine weather and glorious fall foliage. I don't care what anyone else says, for my money it's hard to beat Pennsylvania for sheer beauty in autumn. Of course, the real objective was to collect markers, and I came home with a very satisfying bundle. So we'll kick off the penultimate month of the year by visiting Schuylkill County, and learning an emotionally complex story of both tragedy and triumph.

The marker stands on Schoolhouse Road in Sheppton,
not far from where the mine entrance was.

Sheppton is a small community in northern Schuylkill County, a little way south of Oneida. Like much of the region, it's part of the coal country, where mining was the major industry for decades. David "Davey" Fellin, aged 58, was co-owner of Fellin Coal Company, Sheppton's anthracite mine, and among his employees were Louis Bova, aged 42, and Henry "Hank" Throne, aged 28. Fellin and Throne were said to share something of a father-son relationship, and all three were known for being friendly, mild-mannered individuals who often hung out with friends at a pub at the intersection of Pine and Shepp Streets.

Early on the morning of August 13, 1963, all three men were at work in the mine. It was around eight o'clock when they had made their first load of coal and sent the cart up to be dumped outside the mine. The cart, however, never returned to them. "That's when the big rumble started," Throne recalled later in a newspaper interview, "and all hell broke loose."

Instead, they heard a loud rumble, and seconds later, the mine ceiling collapsed. They were sealed in complete darkness, surrounded by broken timbers and chunks of coal. Throne and Fellin were on one side of the tracks, Bova on the other, and the debris fell in such a way that the track was the dividing line, separating Bova from his two friends. Gradually they lost the ability to see; the overhead lights lost their power supply, the lamps on their helmets burned out, and the matches they lit soon sputtered and failed, leaving them in complete darkness. They were completely trapped beneath the earth, as far from the surface as a football field is long.

I'm claustrophobic. This story is hard for me to tell. I can't even begin to imagine how hard it must have been to endure.

Once the lights were out, Throne and Fellin lost contact with Bova. For five days they were trapped in complete blackness, unable to see anything. They crawled around in hopes of finding a way out; they braced the ceiling with fallen timbers to keep it from dropping farther. To keep from starving to death, they forced themselves to eat bits of wood, and to prevent hypothermia in the below-freezing temperatures of the mine, they slept together, breathing on each other's necks. 

They also continued searching for their friend Bova, calling to him in the darkness. At one point, they were convinced they heard him calling to them, telling them he would drop a light to them. It sounded like he was above them, like he had escaped. But that was the last they heard from him. Throne swore for the rest of his life that they really heard his voice.

Not surprisingly, they experienced hallucinations. What is surprising is that the hallucinations - if indeed that's what they were - were shared ones. They saw visions of the recently deceased Pope John XXIII, and described a stairway leading to a beautiful city. (It's worth noting that prior to the event, one of the men had not been religious and didn't even know what the Pope had looked like, but his description of the man was spot on.) Thorough examinations of the experience and interviews with the two men have led experts, Vatican scholars, and other interested parties to conclude that this might have been a genuine miracle, but that if nothing else, Throne and Fellin were telling the truth about what they believed they had seen. I'm not discounting any possibilities, myself; miracles happen.

After five days, however, something happened which was definitely not a hallucination. Rescuers employed by the firm of Pagnotti Enterprises had managed to drill a hole into the mine, reaching all the way to where the two men were trapped, and lowered a microphone to enable communication. With contact established, and the hole just wide enough to provide supplies, they were soon given "clothes and hamburgers and soup and coffee," Throne recalled. The following day, a second and wider hole was begun, using a drill provided by Howard Hughes. Yes, the oddball billionaire took a personal interest in the crisis, which by this time was gripping the nation, and he contributed the necessary equipment to get the men out of the mine. Meanwhile, the rescuers continued to provide Fellin and Throne not only with food, but also better supplies with which to shore up the ceiling. There was one sleeping bag, which they shared; Throne said that one would work on the ceiling while the other slept.

Finally, on August 27th, almost a full two weeks after the original cave-in, the new hole reached the narrow passage where the two men waited. Harnesses and coveralls were lowered; the pictures I have here are of a permanent display in the Anthracite Museum at Knoebels Amusement Resort, including one of the harnesses used to rescue the men. Throne was hoisted out first, and later recalled having a near panic attack on the way up. Fellin, the older and more experienced miner, was calmer when he was pulled from the mine, and to onlookers' amusement, he was singing "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain" when he emerged.

Fellin and Throne were saved - filthy and cold, but alive. They were taken to a hospital in Hazleton for evaluation, but released within days, in remarkably good shape despite the ordeal. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Bova. Despite their best efforts, rescuers were never able to make any kind of contact with him, and sadly concluded that he had been crushed to death by the debris. Fellin and his co-owner, Eugene Gibbons, were initially ordered by a judge to retrieve Bova's body, but the order was rescinded when it was discovered that such an undertaking would have been not only prohibitively expensive, but incredibly dangerous for whoever made the attempt. Instead, the mine entrance was sealed, and a gravestone for Bova was erected on the site, surrounded by a small white fence.

Bova left behind a young widow, Eva, and an eight-month-old son, John. John's life was turned upside down by the loss of the father he couldn't remember. His mother, whose health was poor, never entirely recovered from the loss of her husband; a few years after her death in 2006, he spread her ashes at the site of the cave-in so that his parents could be together once more. When the PHMC marker was erected not far from the mine location in 2015, John was there to help unveil it along with J. Ronnie Sando, the last surviving member of the rescue team. As part of the dedication ceremony, Sando spoke on behalf of the rest of the team when he said, "Louis Bova, we're sorry. We're sorry we couldn't set you free."

A few years later, a band called The Buoys released a song titled "Timothy," which was about three trapped miners; the lyrics implied that two of them survived by eating the third. Many people at the time thought the song was a reference to the Sheppton collapse, but the band members denied this. They insisted that they had never heard of the Sheppton incident, and that if they had, they would never have written or released such a song because it would have been too disrespectful.

The disaster had a few legacies. One was that the borehole method of rescue became the standard for mine collapses, and has been used worldwide ever since. Another is that small mining operations were subjected to tighter safety regulations, to prevent Louis Bova's fate from befalling other miners. The third, perhaps to be expected, is that it effectively ended the coal industry in the Sheppton area. Schuylkill County is still rich in coal and still has active mines, but not in Sheppton. Not after this.

---

Sources and Further Reading:

Assorted contributors. "Mine Disasters in the United States: The Famous Sheppton Mine Rescue." Compiled and shared courtesy of the United States Mine Rescue Association.

Assorted contributors. Collected writings about the Sheppton mine disaster. Compiled and shared courtesy of the Township of East Union.

Serfass, Donald R. "Entombed forever." Times News Online, August 29, 2015.

Furek, Maxim W. Sheppton: The Myth, Miracle & Music. Self-published, 2015.

Louis J. Bova at FindAGrave.com

Sheppton Mine Disaster and Rescue at the Historical Marker Database 

---

Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.