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WEST FRANKFORT (WSIL) -- Seventy years ago on December 21, 1951, 119 men were killed when an explosion ripped through Orient #2 mine in West Frankfort. 

Disasters close to the holidays leave scars that linger as families try to put their lives back together. 

That day would become known as "Black Christmas," since funerals were held one after the other, before, during and after the holiday.

"My grandparents moved here to work in the coal mines," said West Frankfort resident Sylvia Tresso Tharp. "Everything was 'coal' and it was a thriving community at that time. I would say that 90 percent of my friends' fathers worked in the coal mines and the others were business men or doctors or teachers or something, I mean it all depended on coal. It was the economy of the town."

Barbara Jemison lost her grandfather in Orient No. 2 mine and said, "My grandpa never went to high school. When he was out of the 8th grade, he went into the mines and I believe he was 63 when he died."

You know growing up in West Frankfort, the mines dominated a lot of what we did," said Tharp.

They said at 8 o'clock the mine whistle blew and they knew they had 15 minutes to get to school. In the evening, it was the 8:30 p.m. whistle that the children knew they needed to be in their homes before the sound stopped.

"I was 8-years-old when the explosion happened, and I can remember very vividly my grandmother was staying with us because my mother had just come home from the hospital with a new baby that day," said Zina 'Reach' Nolen. "My grandfather and my dad were both killed in the explosion. That I remember very vividly. 

"I was 18-years-old, I was a freshman in college and I had come home for the Christmas holidays," said Tharp.

Jemison also remembers exactly how old she was. "I was in the 7th grade at Central Junior High, and I was probably 11-years-old."

Tharp said she was at the local basketball game with her boyfriend, who later became her husband when the mine disaster took place.

"By the time the game was over, word had spread that there had been an explosion at Orient No. 2, which is right north of West Frankfort. It was a very sad time for the whole town and through the years, I think that we never have Christmas without remembering what happened on the 21st of December of 1951."

Nolen said some scenes are still so memorable, "We had the caskets, because all of the funeral homes were all so full, we had the caskets in our front bedroom."

Jemison said, "Almost everyone I knew in junior high, I'm not saying everyone, but they either lost a father, an uncle, a neighbor someone who went to their church..."

"It was hard. It was hard on my mother, " Nolen explained.

Tharp said it was a difficult time for everyone, including the miners.

"There were many notes written by the men that were in the mine and it's sad to think of what they must have been going through at that time knowing that they probably not going to make it and I'm sure that was a little but of comfort for the families when they received those. They knew they were thinking about their families at that time."

The disaster led to improved federal and state safety regulations with President Truman signing the Federal Coal Mine Safety Act the following summer. 

You can see the names of each of the men lost as part of a memorial in West Frankfort.