Review by Victor R. Volkman
Quite rarely, a “social history” book of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula crosses my Superior Reads desk. Social history focuses on the lives and experiences of ordinary people, rather than just political or military events. Social history is often described as “history from below” because it explores the perspectives of the rank-and-file rather than, for example, politicians and titans of industry. Social history investigates how people lived, worked, and interacted with each other. The U.P. Notable Book List-winning “We Kept Our Towns Going: The Gossard Girls of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula” by Phyllis Michael Wong as reviewed in the June 2022 issue of Marquette Monthly is a prime example of this genre. As well, the late Allan Koski’s “Empire Mine and the Cascade Range” gets into that territory in regards to labor relations although it has a decidedly more technical focus. My own interest in social history began at Michigan Tech in the mid 1980s, when I became fascinated with social science in general and the Science, Technology, & Society (STS) curriculum in particular as I sat at the feet of the late, great Professor Terry S. Reynolds.
The newest U.P. social history book, Enduring Legacies: People of the 1926 Barnes-Hecker Mine Disaster by Mary V. Tippett digs deep into the vein of social history. On November 3, 1926, catastrophe struck the Barnes-Hecker mine near the small town of Ishpeming in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In less than fifteen minutes, the mine caved in when a torrent of mud, water and debris collapsed, taking the lives of fifty-one men—only ten of whose bodies were ever recovered. The accident remains the worst iron ore mine disaster our country has ever experienced.
Enduring Legacies gives voice to descendants, family members and others connected with the tragedy. Rather than a dusty and dry technical recitation of mining engineering, we get a visceral story of the impact of the loss of these men as told by their own families—as Gordon Lightfoot might have said, “the wives, and the sons, and the daughters”. And no one is more qualified to tell this story than Mary V. Tippett—a granddaughter of Walter Tippett, who perished in the Barnes-Hecker tragedy. In 2016, she led the 90th Anniversary Barnes-Hecker Remembrance Project, and continues to manage the Facebook page with a following of more than 850 people. She currently serves on the board of the Friends of the Michigan Iron Industry Museum in Negaunee. In 1994, she conducted oral histories with underground miners of her dad’s generation, and all of those materials now reside in the Central Upper Peninsula and Northern Michigan University Archives available online.
Tippett’s book is deeply researched and provides salient facts sourced from mine records, contemporaneous news stories, and rare documents and photographs. More than just a recitation of text, Enduring Legacies includes never-before seen family photos from the participating descendants of the fifty-one men who perished. In total, more than 150 of these photos have been meticulous restored, some using cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. As a result, many of the faces are as crisp as if you had just whipped out your smartphone and taken them yesterday. Of course you can see the sisu of the steely eyes of the miners but equally compelling are the tender wedding photos, family portraits, and club photos which humanize and personalize each story. The family stories were contributed by descendants from seventeen states and five countries who Tippett has reached out to either locally or through her worldwide social media network.
Each family has its own unique story and hence its own chapter in Enduring Legacies. The book details families that lived right at the Barnes-Hecker location and in neighboring Diorite, Ishpeming, North Lake location, and West Ishpeming. The ephemera with this book is even more surprising, there are pictures of dolls that belonged to the children, employment cards, newspaper clippings, CCI issued safety fobs indicating the miners had first-aid proficiency, the pocket watch of Thomas Kirby Sr. which was found in the connecting drift between Barnes-Hecker and Morris-Lloyd Mine, and much more than I can possibly list here.
Arvi Wepsala, age 18
Let’s dig briefly into one of the approximately 40 chapters devoted to an individual and their family. Specifically, Arvi Wepsala, the youngest man to perish inside Barnes-Hecker. He was just an 18 year-old man living in Diorite and working as a trammer at the Barnes-Hecker. Trammers had the backbreaking job of pushing heavy carts filled with ore to the main levels where the carts could be emptied into rail cars for transport to the shaft and thence upwards. Arvi was the sole support for his family and siblings in the area, so he was carrying the burden of that on his young shoulders. In an ironic twist, Sulo Wepsala, a surviving brother of Arvi, was contracted by Cleveland Cliffs Iron (CCI) to install fences and concrete caps at abandoned mineshafts around the U.P., including Barnes-Hecker itself. We only know this because Sulo hired teenaged grandson Glenn Wing as a helper to install the cap at Barnes-Hecker. However, not a word was spoken to Glenn that Sulo’s own brother Arvi Wepsala had died at that very spot 50 years earlier. Thankfully, this story is preserved only because Glenn Wing was able to contribute Arvi and Sulo’s background to Enduring Legacies as well as a precious photo of a cocky young Arvi Wepsala astride a 1926 roadster.
Tippett also includes extensive photographic evidence of the Barnes-Hecker site itself as well as rare drawings of how the location would have looked back in the day. An analysis of the Coroner’s Inquest and quick biographical sketches of the jury members provide detailed accounts of what happened and what went wrong. The inquest reporting includes some chilling quotes from investigators, such as that of William Conibear, CCI Director of Safety, who said, “I have never heard a complaint [about safety] from any source… I would have been willing to go underground and made my bed there.”
I found Enduring Legacies to be a fascinating read of how the real lives of miners and families were conducted in small U.P. mining town now 100 years ago. I would recommend this book to anyone who has family roots in the central U.P. or an abiding interest in how a generation lived and worked selflessly to raise their families in the early 20th century. Tippett’s collected accounts breathe life back into a cohort of men who might otherwise be lost forever to history.
