No Greater Love: Shedding new light on history

Mining for the nugget of truth

Creating "No Greater Love" is like excavating a mountain to find the mother lode. I'm not a miner per se but a writer and composer who mines relevant history, newspaper articles, stories, lectures, film, legends, myths, characters, conversations, triumphs and tragedies. The goal is eventually to reach the vein of veracity that runs through it all and then attempt to capture that essence on stage.

One version of what happened a half mile below the surface sometimes doesn't comport with others' stories. Eyewitness accounts in some ways contradict one another. Some of the questions asked of the survivors at the Coroner's Inquest –– how the questions were worded –– seemed intent on prying out answers that protected the North Butte Mining Company from fault. "Did you feel that Sullau (the foreman who accidentally started the fire) was competent?" The huge irony of the disaster is that the Company was in the process of making the Granite Mountain–Speculator Mine the safest on the Hill when the fire broke out.

Some books written on the topic were in such a hurry to get published that the whole story was never covered in enough detail.  That resulted in yet another version of what happened beneath the Granite Mountain Shaft fire in 1917.  Part of the information void is now filled because of a discovery of the transcript of the 1917 "Coroner's Inquest" in 2016. The document was found in a box stored in some dark, dusty corner on an upper floor of the county courthouse. The search for the whole truth will go on into perpetuity, however, because frankly the heroes of the disaster took their truths with them to their graves.

And so ... we, as creators of "No Greater Love," feel along the walls of an underground maze of mine tunnels, slog through the mud of information, get dirty, take criticism, get slapped down, lifted up, listen, rewrite, challenge, discard that and accept this. Finally, we make decisions to provide the best opportunity to peer straight into the dark, dark, darkness of "not knowing" for certain and light yet another candle on history to brighten with a different kind awareness what likely happened within the human beings themselves.