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Editor’s note: Randy Borri sent in this story about the history of the cross on the Mark coal mine.
MARK – In the past five years, we have heard numerous versions of how the cross on the Mark coal mine got there. Since many people have claimed to know the history of the first cross. I (Randy Borri), Jack Moriarty and Ron Moriarty would like to give the historical society the correct version of the original cross.
In 1957, after seeing a small cross on the Ladd dump, Jack Moriarty and I decided to place a cross on the Mark dump. Michael T. Novak wanted to help, but he was on the verge of moving to LaSalle and couldn’t spend much time with us.
We asked Ron Moriarty to help us and the three of us made and placed the original cross on the dump. Jack was in eighth grade, I was in seventh grade, and Ron was in sixth grade. Jim “Booge” Moriarty was remodeling his house at the time and gave us the needed two-by-fours to construct the cross.
We made the original cross 14 feet long and placed large coffee cans on the end of each arm and one on the top of the main pole. Our plans were to use kerosene burners (smudge pots), used at the time to mark road potholes, construction, etc, and tie them in the coffee cans. We were going to use a ladder to light the burners each evening. After the cross was assembled, Jack, Ron and I carried it up the dump and set it up.
About five days after we set the cross up, we approached Mayor Bruno Biagi, Harvey Brown, and my dad Hugo Borri, who were in the process of doing Christmas decorating at the village hall, to ask them for permission to borrow three smudge pots to light the cross.
Biagi had never noticed the cross before and, along with Borri and Brown, was amazed at the sight. They suggested rather than use kerosene burners, the town should light the cross with lights. Brown furnished the generator, which I believe came from Illinois Power Company. I remember it was a very big and heavy unit.
Borri volunteered to wire the cross and the Mark Boy Scouts dragged the heavy generator to the top. Jimmie Troglio was the main person to carry the gas to the top and start the generator every evening. You could hear the generator running every night throughout the town.
The following year, 1958, a new and bigger cross was made in the basement of the Mark Grade School. Borri was in charge and did the lighting while the Mark Boy Scouts helped make the cross. That cross was carried to the top by the seventh- and eighth-grade boys of Mark Grade School.
The Mothers Club of Mark Grade School offered to purchase the electric wire that was placed on small poles to run up the dump. The Mark Boy Scouts offered to take care of the cross and get it ready for lighting every Christmas and Easter. However, the weather – lightning, etc. – took such a toll on the cross and wiring that it was not lit the Christmas and Easter of 1964.
In 1965, while I was attending IVCC, I approached the town board members to get permission and financial backing to fix the cross again. The Mark School Club helped, along with citizens who furnished construction supplies. David Piccioli, Kenny Johnson and I took the cross down, repaired, and painted it behind my parents’ garage.
The lights were put on a one-by-four with the intention of bolting it to the main cross at Christmas and Easter, and then taking that portion down and storing it until the next season to help preserve it. Wire was run up the dump from a telephone pole on the southwest corner of the dump. All was going well until the end of the second season when someone stole the wire going from the pole to the top.
After 1966, I went away to the University of Illinois and lost track of who took care of the cross after that.
We hope this clarifies the originality of the first cross because it is the actual fact. Jack, Ron and I had no specific intentions to honor anyone as stated by some, but to just put a cross on the dump and light it with kerosene burners. We would like to say it was done to honor the miners, as some have suggested, but it wasn’t. It was three boys who got an idea that the townspeople supported. We see no reason why it shouldn’t be a memorial for all the miners everywhere who worked in coal mines like Mark’s St. Paul coal mine.