Was there a coal miner in your family?

If the answer is "yes," the Anthracite Heritage Foundation wants his name.The foundation is preparing to order the first set of plaques for placement on the Wall of Honor at the anthracite miners' memorial garden on Public Square, at King's on the Square, the college's building at the site of the former Ramada Inn."We want to honor the miners who worked and sometimes died in the anthracite mines of northeastern Pennsylvania," said Donald Sanderson, president of the Anthracite Heritage Foundation.A polished, black granite piece with an etching of a coal miner's face is in place, along with kiosks that hold plaques related to mining history. About 500 names of miners have been collected to date, Sanderson said, and plaques inscribed with 100 names each will be placed on the wall that holds the miners' memorial."We have room for 6,000 names," Sanderson said, "and if we get more, we will find room for them also."The memorial was designed by Sanderson, an architect formerly with the Quad 3 Group. The $200,000 construction cost was underwritten by a family that asked to be kept anonymous.Sanderson said he and the late James Burke, both of Bear Creek, were in Burke's backyard one day in 2010 when the conversation turned to mining. The men concurred that young people today will not experience the sight of grimy, tired coal miners walking home from the workings."No one has honored the miner as an individual, as a person," Sanderson said, and the neighbors came up with the idea of replicating the Ellis Island immigrants' wall.The miners' Wall of Honor is intended to help educate young people while also honoring those miners, Sanderson said.Sanderson and Burke first eyed the former Central Railroad of New Jersey station as a memorial site, possibly in conjunction with the Luzerne County Historical Society, but "that didn't work out," and then attention shifted to the former First National Bank Building on Public Square. "That didn't work either," Sanderson said.Burke, chairman of the board at King's for 10 years, spotted the small plot next to the former Ramada and King's gave approval so long as the foundation met development expenses. King's has assisted in other history-related endeavors, including the Rev. Joseph Murgas Room which honors the wireless telegraphy pioneer and serving as repository for Sue Hand's 300-piece collage on The Anthracite Miners and Their Hollowed Ground. The college is seeking to acquire missing pieces to complete the collage on the first floor of the Public Square building.The miners' memorial had its final "touch-up" work done late in 2015 and "we are now in the name collection phase," Sanderson said. Additional historical info on miners also is accepted and a registry is being developed.Names can be submitted via the foundation's website,

www.ahfdn.org, or by mail to the foundation at 69 Public Square, Wilkes-Barre PA 18701, Suite 709.Sanderson said the foundation expects that people will travel to Wilkes-Barre to see the names of ancestors on the wall, just as people journey to Ellis Island. The memorial serves as a "great marketing tool" for King's, he noted.James Burke was the first graduate of King's, getting his diploma two months before the commencement of the Class of 1950, Sanderson said. Burke went off to California and became chief financial officer of Paramount Studios.Burke also developed a DVD, "When Coal Was King," a 14-minute fictional account of a breaker boy who loses his father to an accident in the mines.Other monuments and statues to coal miners dot the Wyoming Valley. A statue of a coal miner stands at the entrance to Nanticoke and an Anthracite Miners' Memorial rests in the park created by the Huber Breaker Preservation Society in Ashley. Historical markers call attention to various tragedies, such as the Avondale Mine disaster in Plymouth Township, Knox Mine disaster in Jenkins Township, Lattimer Massacre near Hazleton and Judge Jesse Fell of Wilkes-Barre burning anthracite in an open grate.