Front Porch Conversations: Carol and Paul Roberts close out series

KELLOGG — For the last time this summer, the “front porch” outside 125 McKinley Ave. in Kellogg was crowded by audience members taking in local history, this time from Carol and Paul Roberts.

Copious journal entries by family members of both Carol and Paul’s filled out their recollections in family histories as they traced generations moving to the area or, in Paul’s case, moving back and forth between the Silver Valley and Meridian.

A running theme for both families, however, was that they had relatives providing for their families by working in the Silver Valley mines, and some of those family members went through the trauma of accidents while conducting their arduous work.

Paul’s grandfather, Paul Taylor, was the youngest shift worker at the mine, and got a job because his boss had been caught stealing gold.

“He was proud of the fact that he was the youngest shifter at the smelter,” Paul said.

Years later, when Paul was in elementary school and his grandfather took him on a tour of the child-friendly parts of his job, he recalls the shimmering results of the silvery refinery.

“He showed us row upon row upon row upon row of silver ingots, and I was convinced that my grandfather owned all of that,” Paul said.

From his perspective as a child, Paul couldn’t shake the thought that his grandfather must be rich to be handling the line of silver ingots nestled in the mine’s safe during that tour.

Unfortunately, the realities of family members working in the mine would be brought home for his family all too soon.

Looking over father Burt’s journal, Paul came across a notation that Burt had remarked on Nov. 1, 1962, to a fellow miner that a particular mineshaft could kill a man if he fell into it.

Within a matter of days, Burt had indeed fallen 72 feet down into that mineshaft, but he didn’t perish, as he had predicted. Instead, he woke up about 30 minutes later in the glow of his headlamp. His journal describes how he “grabbed the light and held it close,” certain it was “the light of Jesus was telling me that I was going to be all right.”

Burt was laid out flat on his back, with a wife and four sons at home, and was in much pain as he healed, but he would still make light of his situation by recounting that the body cast went from his chest to “well, just about there." Though he was able to become mobile again, the injuries never fully left him.

Carol’s parents worked in the shadow of the Bunker Hill smelter stacks, so it’s perhaps no surprise that her brother, Bill Woolum wound up working at the Zinc Plant.

One day, in a room with multiple zinc “roasters,” a nasty cloud of chemicals kicked up and gas and dust poured over him and his coworker, Stan. Stan started to exit the area, but when Woolum attempted to do the same, he fell.

“In 1973, my brother Bill fell into a roaster at the Zinc Plant and temporarily lost his sight,” Carol recounted.

In her brother’s blog entry of the near-death experience, Bill wrote “I decided to die. Deciding to die saved my life. I had gotten under the gas."

Laying on the ground wound up alleviating some of the distress from the gasses hanging at the top of the roaster, but the air was still too toxic to stage a rescue. Carol noted that the combination of sulfur dioxide and tears from her brother’s eyes had formed sulfuric acid.

When Woolum’s coworkers found him and shined lights from the top of the roaster, he was eventually able to collect himself and scramble down to safety, recovering his eyesight. Years later, he, much like Carol, went on to start a blog about his life in Kellogg.

The talk was packed with too much history to recount in one article, but videos from the Front Porch Conversations speaker series will eventually be uploaded by Project Uplift Kellogg social media.

For everyone who has been following the series or is interested in local history, Carol had some advice to give. Oral storytelling isn’t the only way to record your family history. She urges others in the Silver Valley to take down those stories, from experiences lived by themselves and their relatives so that they won’t be forgotten.

“You’re the only one who can tell your story,” Carol said.