Dear Jerry,  

Thanks for your quick reply.  

Unfortunately I have too little concrete information to impart about Grady (if he really was our Grandpa). I do have a photo of him, head and shoulders, in a suit and tie, probably in his early twenties I would guess, but possibly still a teenager. When exactly and from what part of Poland he emigrated and whether he was already married then, I don’t know. My guess is it would be around 1900, possibly slightly later.  

He married a Polish girl. They had 7 (or perhaps only 6) children: Pearl , Sophie, Ann, Cecile, Aline (my mother) and Paul are the names I can remember. I met all of my Mum’s sisters in 1958 when as a 7-year-old I visited the States with my brother Charles (2½ years older) and with Mum (I was born and grew up in Great Britain and have lived in Munich since 1978). I met Grannie Last then, too, in Cecile’s home in Washington DC . Sadly, she was old and bedridden. I just remember her “turned to the wall,” though imagination may be contributing here. I have a photograph of her as a sweet (and tough) old woman, in her seventies, I would guess, taken at my Mum’s wedding in Washington DC in 1946.  

As I said, Mum was born in Scranton 1913. I believe she was the youngest of the children. That might put Pearl ’s birth (I believe she was the oldest) at around 1905. So presumably Grandpa Last worked as a miner for some years in Scranton .  

I don’t know when the family moved to Clymer. I assume it had to do with Grandpa’s getting work there, or better work. As I said in my earlier e-mail, Mum went to Clymer High School . She grew up in the Catholic church.  

She told us her father had had a position of some responsibility in the mines, as some kind of inspector. She never went into details about life in a miner’s family. She never talked about the accident in which he died. (It’s from my father I have the information that Mum was “about 14” when Grandpa was killed. Dad never knew him: he met Mum in Washington DC just after World War II. After their marriage they went over to Great Britain , living in Scotland and then England . My brother was born in Edinburgh , I was born in Glasgow .) Mum had a few words of Polish, but assimilation was pretty thorough in the Last family. Whether the parents still used Polish as a matter of course, I can’t say.  

Some time after 1931 the entire family evidently moved to Washington DC . Those years between 1926 and the move must have been tough. Rumors of a certain roughness in Grandpa Last (I guess the really gentle miners tended to be the exception) have been passed down, and that, sadly, his son bore the brunt of it. These are delicate matters, I know. Whatever the facts on that count, he was evidently a responsible and duty-minded man and father. He was eclipsed well before his time. What traumatic lives these people must have led.  

My cousin Cecile (whose father was Paul Last) in Virginia has told me the family name before Anglicization was: “Lescs or Lascs or perhaps Lasczs/Lesczs. Our grandfather had Lasczs on his birth certificate, but correspondence from family in Poland had Lescs on it.” The last time I heard from Cecile was several years ago. I’ll see if I can get back in touch with her.  

That’s all I can say for the moment. Maybe there are some bits of information tucked away in a corner of my brain that will appear again.  

The writing of poetry is my passion in life. Seven years ago I was researching mining in Pennsylvania and wrote a slightly Virgilian/Dantesque subterranean encounter with Grandpa Last, which I enclose as an rtf file. If Grandpa Last is the George/Grady Last of Sample Run, then the details of mules, anthracite and “going down” will, as I gather from the material on your website, not be applicable. Mules, I guess, were much earlier in the century. It’s a romantic piece, which I would write differently today. The ending could have been more powerful: Grandpa’s greeting to the upper world could have had more content. The poem was published in the poetry magazine Babel No. XI in April 1998, Babel Verlag, Denklingen, ISSN 0176-2893.  

Please feel free to use any of this information, including my poem (but with a credit please).  

You say you have some information on Grady (on the memorial plaque George) Last. I’d be immensely grateful for any extra information on him, especially anything that would increase the certainty that this is our “Grandpa Last.” As I say, I’ll also be trying to strike up contact with Cousin Cecile again, but this may take a while (I only have a postal address, and no certainty that she is still there).  

When we do manage to establish the identity of my Grandpa Last and Grady then I will willingly send you the photos I mentioned above (I have no scanner myself but have a professional photographer friend who, I know, would readily do this). 

Thank you again for the website. Keep up the good work.  

Best wishes,

Christopher   

To: Webmaster@8leg.com

Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2005 10:52 AM

Subject: Sample Run / George Last  

Dear Jerry Hetrick,  

I just discovered, with a certain amount of diligence, your Sample Run mining disaster website.  

For years I’ve been trying to learn a little bit more about the circumstances of my Polish grandfather’s death, down a mine, in Pennsylvania , probably some time in the 1920s. My mother Aline, born in Scranton PA in 1913, née Last, graduated from Clymer High School in 1931. A gold graduation ring lies on my desk beside me, with the year on it.  

That her father died down a mine was one of the things Mum passed on to us, but when exactly I never asked, and by the time I was more interested to know such details, she herself had already died (1977).  

My father, who is still alive, an Englishman about to move from York to Somerset , UK , has not been able to help much. He could only say Mum was around 14 when her father was killed. Relatives in the USA have also had little in the way of detail. A cousin wrote me a few years ago that she thought the original Polish name of our grandfather was Lescs or Leszczs. But Last was the name my mother grew up using, as well as her 5 sisters and 1 brother. Even Grandpa’s first name was a mystery. My father once said my brother’s second given name (Gregory) was in deference to Grandpa Last.  

That a George Last is on the list of the 44 miners killed, and that there is a tombstone for Grady Last, makes me begin to feel relatively certain that this is our grandfather. The dates and place fit in. That names were protean in those days, for various reasons, and not just pronunciation problems, is well documented.  

Thank you for your site. If anything else comes to mind I’ll let you know. And if you have any ideas, please feel free to do the same.  

Best wishes,  

Christopher Jenkin-Jones  

Daiserstrasse 58

D-81371 München

Germany

Tel.: +49 89 72016214

Tel./Fax/AB: +49 89 765756  

Anthracite

“A mongrel baying at a quarter moon,

The foreman chthonic. — You see, that Monday,

I misread all the omens, and went down.

I heard, clearly, the idle snort and bray

Of mules, men drilling, then a roar of sound

About a mile along the main gangway,

As if war had broken out underground:

Fire raged. It does still. For us below —

A murky expedition, murky end.”

He paused. “Black diamonds? A while ago,

Trees they were, grew by a brackish stream.

‘Empire of cruel weight,’ said a Pharaoh.”

As a single rose-bush in full bloom

Trembled on a culm bank in starts of love,

And burned cleanly with a pale blue flame,

A bell rang out, and he began to move.

“My tongue has snapped. — If there are any left,

Remember me to those I knew above.”

Again a bell echoed. Then, to the shaft,

Along an ill-lit gangway I was ushered,

As in some trance, half gingerly, half swift.

 

Christopher Jenkin -Jones