The 1907 Monongah explosions may be remembered for Italian deaths that exceeded those in 1956 Marcinelle. It may better serve us to remember the West Virginia disaster for the way body pieces were assembled, covered and paraded with a deception so grand that pieces of assembled flesh were given Italian names or for the Monongah myths imported into Italian society or for the Italian women, widowed and deceived by the Monongah disaster, their lives left unrevealed.

Grandpa Tropea taught me things I will never forget, about a president named for a type of pasta, Abraham Linguine, and about the Monongah disaster. Grandpa worked in those mines and he gently pressed into my heart feelings for so many sons, husbands, fathers, cugini and paesani obliterated in a few seconds – and those miners who were not reported.