Blasts that killed 26 men in a Kentucky coal mine still echo 50 years later • Kentucky Lantern

Blasts that killed 26 men in a Kentucky coal mine still echo 50 years later • Kentucky Lantern

Elizabeth Griffith, the pregnant widow of Scotia miner Robert Griffith, clutches the flag from his coffin. Robert Griffith was a veteran of the Vietnam War. He was laid to rest in Whitesburg after deadly underground explosions killed him and 25 others over two days in March 1976. (Earl Dotter/UMWA Journal)At 11:15 on the morning of March 9, 1976, Virgil Coots, a foreman at the Scotia coal mine in Letcher County, called to the surface. “You’ve cu…