Good afternoon and thank you for being here today.
Thanks to the volunteers who are keeping alive Ely’s mining history -- mining that lifted so many families This memorial and the exhibits in the shaft house not only honor the miners who worked here, but also help keep alive the hope, hope that mining will resume near our city so that future generations will benefit as ours has.
Songs can be inspired by unexpected things. And sometimes songs can inspire unexpected things.
(A recording of Stains of Toil was played.) Here are the lyrics: “They came from Ljubljana. Sailed from Trieste From Finland and Cornwall. Then they came west.
They heard of the place they all looked for Where under the forest lay rich iron ore.
They went to the captain and in their own way They hired on quickly and started that day.
They crowded in cages, went underground And build a future for family and town.
[chorus] Those were the miners who left behind The Stains of Toil from the ore they mined Their work, their aches, chills and pains Built our city and the lives we gained. They drilled and then blasted raises and drifts Nights merged with days on rotating shifts.
They worked on contract and earned their pay Respecting the bosses but having their say.
They built our houses and drank in saloons And boisterously sang their old country tunes.
And loved their families and gave us more Than 88 years of hematite one. [Chorus] The underground mines hummed with pride As deeper they dug and ever more wide They built our schools -- won a war Scraping and tugging the blue iron ore. The mines are still yet ore remains We must remember our fortune and gains Miners who came here sweated and died Built our foundation and gave us our pride.
[piano interlude] A toast to the miners who left behind The Stains of Toil from the ore they mined.”
While in college I received a letter from my dad, Matt Luthanen. Dad was one of the hundreds of Ely area miners who worked underground in Ely. In Dad’s case it was in the Pioneer from 1929 when he graduated from Ely High School until the final shift of this mine on April 1, 1967 just a few weeks before I graduated from that same school. For 37 years he changed into his mining clothes, climbed the stairs from the Dry House behind us, and rode the cage down hundreds of feet with his partner to begin a shift -- sometimes days, sometimes 3 to 11, sometimes graveyard.
As did hundreds of men over the nearly nine decades that underground mines operated here.
Matt was also a bit of a poet. And in that letter, he scrawled the line “and not only does one leave behind the stains of toil, but also chills, aches, and pains.”
In the family sauna at Burntside there’s an 8-by-11 plaque with those words. They stayed with me for decades.
In 2014 I was noodling on my piano one afternoon and the phrase “left behind the stains of toil” called me. I heard them in six-eight time. I plunked a D to e minor pattern. Then where? G to A 6 seemed to follow. Then ending the passage “from the ore they mined” with that mournful b minor.
And from there, the melody, chords, and lyrics developed. When I had a rough draft of it, I took it to my friend and recording artist George Faber and played it for him on my sister’s piano, adding the descending passage that opens and closes the song over that ambivalent D power chord to suggest the descent the miners took to their work stations.
A week later I took the piece to a studio where Tim Snow, a Twin Cities professional musician provided the drums, guitar parts, and engineering to make the recording you just heard. I’m grateful for George’s vocal, with its grit and emotion, and Tim’s light and heavy touches to musically express the appreciation the song seeks to evoke from the listener for the contributions these miners gave.
The song is accompanied by scores of historic images of Ely’s miners in a video on YouTube titled “Ely Miners Memorial -- Stains of Toil.”
The Ely Miners Memorial committee felt that the phrase clipped from that letter Dad wrote decades ago -- the phrase that inspired me to write this tribute song was a fitting title for this monument that we’re dedicating here today.
So we honor the men, those who perished in the mines, and the others who left behind the Stains of Toil. And the chills, aches, and pains that built this community. And gave so much to those of us who knew them.
Be well, be safe, and be grateful. Thank you for being here today for this dedication.
Doug Luthanen grew up in Ely and graduated from Memorial High School in 1967. He wrote a weekly viewpoint column for the Northwest Arkansas Times for four years and is an occasional contributor to The Ely Echo.
