Dec 24, 2017 By Richard Robbins 4 min read

The 37 miners who died in Robena Mine 55 years ago never had a chance. Two explosions rocked the Greene County mine complex on that cold, snowy Dec. 6, 1962.

The men, employees of United States Steel, died in the first explosion a little after 1 p.m. The second explosion 20 minutes later was more violent, a federal investigation of the mine tragedy found.

The inquiry by the U.S. Bureau of Mines was concluded in February 1963, a few short months after the mine tragedy. It wasn’t until the next year — in June 1964 — that a trial was held in Greene County of the first of four men charged by the Commonwealth with safety violations at the mine.

Three days after the start of the trial charges were dismissed against defendant Michael Wydo, Robena Mine superintendent.

The judge, a jurist brought in from Cumberland County by the name of Dale Shughart, after listening to two days of testimony, found “no evidence” linking “any” of the safety violations cited in the testimony to the explosions.

Judge Shughart stated the 1961 state law under which Wydo was charged virtually precluded a finding of guilt.

“It is very clear,” Shughart wrote, “that the imposition of … criminal responsibility for violations such as those proved by the Commonwealth would very seriously interfere with coal production.

“We cannot conclude that such an absurd or unreasonable result was intended by the (state) legislature.”

As a consequence, Judge Shughart said, “We conclude that the legislature did not intend to impose … criminal responsibility upon those in supervisory positions in the mines. Since such a finding is necessary for a conviction … (Wydo) is entitled to a dismissal of the charges.”

Greene County District Attorney W. Bertram Waycoff appealed the ruling unsuccessfully. Waycoff argued that the judge’s conclusion that mine bosses could not personally be expected to know of every little thing going on in their mines made the enforcement of mine safety laws impossible.

If the top men weren’t responsible then no one was.

United Mine Workers officials privately expressed the opinion that the system was rigged. UMW counsel Arnold Smorto, in a memo to union president Tony Boyle, said, “The long litany of errors is such that one wonders whether they occurred because of coincidence, accident or plan.”

The veteran attorney, whose memo can be found in the union archives at Penn State, University Park, said the Wydo trial was “one of the most bizarre cases in which I have been involved.”

The union’s distrust was largely directed at Greene County court officials. In October 1963, the president of the Robena local, John Ozanich, said, “We wonder (if the delay in going to trial was intended to) sort of let the public forget the violations … and ease the importance of the case.”

In his letter to Pennsylvania Attorney General Walter Alessandroni, the local union chief threatened to voice the union’s concerns in public, thereby striking politically at Republicans in control of Harrisburg.

The letter was copied to Gov. Bill Scranton. (At the time of the Wydo trial the following June, Scranton was running for the GOP nomination for president, with Alessandroni a top lieutenant.)

In June 1965, as the appeal process petered out, the UMW’s Lewis Evans told Boyle that Waycoff’s failure “is another in an amazing turn of events. In my opinion, it was done deliberately … I have no confidence in this DA or his predecessor.”

At this year’s ceremony honoring the Robena dead at the miners’ statue on Route 21, the union’s secretary-treasurer Levi Allen remarked that in hardening “the resolve” of the Mine Workers, the deaths of the 37 miners paved the way for the seminal federal mine safety law of 1969.

Shortchanged in court, the 37 were vindicated in the halls of Congress. Or at least it’s nice to think so.

Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.