If this doesn't make you cry, your heart is stone

PHOTO: This letter released by the Toler family on Thursday in Flatwoods, W. Va was written by Martin Toler Jr., who died with 11 other miners in the Sago mine. The note was given to Martin's brother, Tom Toler, by the coroner. (AP photo)



TALLMANSVILLE, W.Va. (AP) - Tom Toler identified the body of his youngest brother. And then he was handed a message from the dead man. In wobbly printing, written in ink on the back of an insurance application, 51-year-old miner Martin Toler Jr. said goodbye. For now.

''(I'll) see them on the other side,'' the note said. ''It wasn't bad. I just went to sleep. I love you.''

His brother, a miner himself for 30 years, was so shocked by the simple, eloquent farewell that he didn't think to ask - standing there in a newly opened morgue in a long-closed elementary school - just exactly where his brother had stashed the piece of paper. In his pocket? In his lunchbox?

''It just shook me up when they gave it to me,'' he said.

And as he read the boxed letters fashioned with a shaky pen, ''I took it to mean that it was written in the final stages. I'd call it more or less scribbling.''

Of the 12 miners who died after Monday's explosion, at least a handful managed to scrawl a last testament to their families, according to loved ones. The exact number of messages is not yet known.

All but one of the coal workers were trapped for more than 41 hours behind a curtain erected as a barrier to deadly carbon monoxide. The 12th victim may have died from the blast itself.

Another miner's brother said he knew of at least four handwritten goodbyes. But John Groves said his family was not one of the recipients though his brother, Jerry Groves, was one of the victims.