Faces to Recall: Artist, Miners’ Families Craft a Healing Place

By Steve Fidel Deseret Morning News

HUNTINGTON — Some of the photographs the public never saw of the six trapped miners and three rescuers who died trying to reach them are now in the hands of a sculptor who is memorializing the nine men on one of two monuments planned as a remembrance of the lives lost in the Crandall Canyon Mine in August.

Families of the lost miners chose a local artist, sculptor Karen Jobe Templeton, to design and craft a monument that will be placed in Huntington on city-owned land near the mouth of Huntington Canyon.

During the rescue attempts that followed the Aug. 6 seismic event inside the mine that trapped miners Kerry Allred, Brandon Phillips, Don Erickson, Manuel Sanchez, Louis Hernandez and Carlos Payan, the families of the trapped miners and rescuers killed 10 days later withheld from the media some of their favorite images of their loved ones, Templeton said, because they didn’t want treasured memories to be branded with the tragedy.

Now, however, those cherished photos are one of several tools Templeton is using to create sculptured “portraits” of the men. She has also had family members in her Carbon County studio, having them guide her hands as she placed wax on figures that will be used to make bronze castings of the men.

The life-sized faces of the six trapped miners will be in line on a 16-foot-wide bronze panel with the faces of the three rescue workers killed — Dale Black, Brandon Kimber and Gary Jensen — looking back at them. The bronze will sit atop a concrete monument base that will have the inscription “Heroes Among Us” across the front.

Templeton said she began thinking of a tangible way to express her emotion over the mine tragedy in the frantic days when searchers were still looking for the trapped miners. With bodies still inside the mountain, the families were left without a tangible remembrance of their loved ones.

“I thought, ‘What if my husband (Kent) died and I had nothing to touch?’ I decided then I would at least make a bronze cast of one of the lost to give to their wife.” She began working on a likeness of Dale Black, one of the rescuers, to give to his wife, Wendy.

Then when family and community plans for a memorial developed to the point that an artist was chosen to do the work, her likeness of Black became the first of nine faces she will sculpt in wax and then cast in bronze.

Each miner will be wearing a miner’s hat in the sculpture on the monument. Templeton said she will make individual castings to give to each family — with or without the hat.

Sheila Phillips said the individual likeness of her son, Brandon, will be without the miner’s hat.

“He had only worked in the mine 11 days,” she said. “I don’t want to remember him as a miner.”

She and Nelda Erickson, the wife of trapped miner Don Erickson, are working together on the second monument, which they hope to place inside the canyon within sight of the mountain spot over where their loved ones remain inside.

Phillips sketched a design that has six markers in a semi- circle. She said each family will design the individual markers, which will stand in lieu of a headstone since the families do not have a body they can bury. Three stone benches will sit inside the half-circle, each in memory of the rescuers killed inside the mine in a subsequent seismic “bump” inside the mine.

Erickson said family members will take a field trip into the canyon to look at possible monument sites after clearing a monumental hurdle — Christmas. Not all of the lost miners have family close by at this point. But for those who do, the time they spend together making plans for the monuments has been helpful in a difficult time.

“They’re not family, but they’ve become like family. When I go through something and find out they’ve gone through it too, it helps,” Erickson said.

The families are still getting steady outside support, especially with the memorial projects.

Emery County Sheriff Lamar Guymon said he had talked to the Forest Service supervisor, who promised support in arranging permits to locate the in-canyon monument, which will almost surely be on Forest Service land. Guymon said he has also been promised help from the office of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in securing necessary permits.

“There is so much beauty up there in so many places,” the sheriff said of Huntington Canyon. While the group wants to see the canyon memorial placed near the mine, they don’t want it to be a road-side attraction along the highway. “It needs to be where you can go and be alone,” Guymon said. “There are some pretty places you can just go sit and spend the day if you want. That’s the idea.”

Huntington Mayor Hillary Gordon said she and the city continue in a support role, facilitating meetings and receiving donations to cover the cost of the monuments.

Mike Mower, the governor’s state planning coordinator, said all of the $200,000 cost of the two monuments is coming from donated funds, supplies and labor and includes $100,000 from a single, anonymous donor. Mine owner Bob Murray has also pledged his support for the project as well as a financial contribution, Mower said. The miners’ families have contributed $15,000.

Mower characterized the projects as “a capstone of the community’s efforts to come together after the disaster. For all involved in the project, it is certainly a labor of love.”

Phillips said she is hoping both monuments are dedicated before next August’s anniversary of the tragedy.

E-mail: sfidel@desnews.com

(c) 2008 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.