FARMINGTON -- Garry Boros was 14 when he got the phone call that a methane explosion had turned the No. 9 mine on Flat Run into a fiery inferno.

"We were in the process of moving that year when it happened," Boros recalled, "And we had to move without him."

His father is still lost in the mine shafts below the tall graphite memorial, and the sacrifice he and 77 others made has changed how miners are treated by their employers.

"There were no federal laws period that protected coal miners with respect to the right for the government to come in and inspect the mine and enforce the ways in the books," United Mine Workers of America president Cecil Roberts said at a memorial service Nov. 15.

Families reflected on their feelings at the time of the disaster, and how they hoped for change for future miners.

"Those innocent miners were to have evacuated as soon as the fans shut down that early autumn morning," read Aida Mainella Everhart from an excerpt she wrote after her father died in the explosion. "The methane gas built up exploded with such brute force that it shook hillsides and rattled homes, instantly murdering the 78 unsuspecting miners."

The Number nine explosion prompted the 1969 Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, and Roberts said the 78 who died have saved thousands from death in the mines of West Virginia.

"Before this tradgedy, the 25 years leading up to the '69 Act, 12,000 miners died in the mines," he shared in front of a large crowd. "After the passage, 3,000...9,000 fewer people died."

Those laws continue to change to protect those who work for West Virginia's number one industry.