FINISHING THE VERSE

The morning sun shone warm and bright
Upon the wall of ice
And everyone was remarking
About how very nice
It was to have it
Seem like Spring.
Little did they know that day
The sorrow it would bring.

The whistle blew at 9 a.m. -
A coffee break, at last.
The quarry work was hard for all,
The danger never past.

They went inside the little shack
For coffee and a bite to eat,
They never knew that danger lurked
And death they soon would meet.

A worker had gone outside
To spray down the frozen stone,
Never thinking it would come down
And men would not go home.

The ice came down upon the shack
Upon the men inside;
The warning whistles blew so loud
As the men were crushed and died.

So let this be a warning -
To those quarrymen who remain,
Please try to be more careful -
That they should not have died in vain.

(Written by my sister Ila Russell and me, for our brother Freddie, one of three men killed that day in 1963 in a Vermont granite quarry.)