Town Pump lights headframe to honor miners
Pub Date: 11/1/2005
By Roberta Forsell Stauffer of The Montana Standard
As with many Butte families, the Kenneallys of Town Pump Inc. can trace their Butte beginnings back to the underground mines.
In the 1880s, the lure of the mines drew John Kenneally over from County Cork, Ireland. According to the family, he started out as a hard rock miner, then became a dynamite expert, working in numerous mines across the Butte Hill. He married a girl named Hanna Drew, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Now five generations strong, the family has decided to honor John and all other Butte miners by lighting the Steward headframe near Main and Woolman.
"We're very pleased to have the opportunity to do it because We're proud of our heritage and We're proud of Butte," said Maureen Kenneally, vice president of corporate communications and great-granddaughter of John. "This represents a long legacy for Butte and the Kenneally family."
Town Pump's charitable foundation donated $12,000 toward the lighting project. It also contributed to lighting the Orphan Girl headframe a few years ago as part of its Blueprint for Change sponsorship.
Copper City Signs recently installed the Steward lights, and Butte's Urban Revitalization Agency contributed $2,600 toward electrical work.
Maureen Kenneally said she hopes the illuminated headframes will draw people to visit Butte and study the community's rich heritage.
"They are the symbols for Butte, the mining city," she said. "When we take care of them and light them up, we know they are going to be here forever."
Besides the Steward and Orphan Girl, three other headframes now glow in red every night: the Original, sponsored by the Butte Soroptimist Club, the Anselmo, lit by Joe and Rosemary Jordan, and the Travona, sponsored by Jon Sesso and Barbara Kornet.
Two more should be lit by Christmas: the Mountain Con, sponsored by Floyd and Margaret Bossard and Bob and Pauline Poore, and the Belmont, sponsored by MERDI.
Mainstreet Uptown Butte Director George Everett coordinates the headframe lighting project, and he couldn't be happier with how It's gone.
"The response has been overwhelming," Everett said. "We just put the idea out in front of the public, and we've had so many people interested there's even been arguments over who would sponsor what headframe people have such strong attachments to particular ones.
"If it had stopped with the Travona (the first to be lit), it would have been a neat project," Everett said. "Five is pretty amazing."
Reprinted with permission of the Montana Standard.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, Nov. 2005, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.