(WSIL) -- On December 21, 1951, 119 coal miners were killed in the Orient No. 2 Mine explosion in West Frankfort.
Williamson County resident Charles Fairbanks remembers it well.
"He didn't talk a whole lot about his job, and he didn't like his picture taken."
Fairbanks was one of six kids with a close relationship with his family. His father was a miner at Orient No. 2.
"Of course it hurt. You lose a member of your family, it hurts inside."
While Charles lived through the tragedy, others learned about the devastation through newspapers and family members.
Steve Sawalich says, although he wasn't around during that time, it still hits him hard.
"Every time I go down the road where it cuts off the interstate, it always strikes me. That that's where they brought all the bodies out, 119 of them, and they took them to the junior high gym here in town where they identified everybody," explains Sawalich.
Leaders with the Old King Coal Festival are now working to erect a monument to honor the lives lost in the Orient Mine Disaster.
The monument will be placed in downtown West Frankfort at the .
