Lifetime Achievement

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Frank Markosek returns to his dinner table after receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Southeastern Utah Energy Producers Association banquet Thursday night. Markosek got his introduction to coal mining at age eight, when his father, the superintendent at the old Kaiser Steel Mine near Sunnyside, let him operate the locomotive engine in the No. 2 mine occasionally on weekends. He began working as a miner in 1968 at Kaiser and took jobs of increasing responsibilty, including fireboss, section foreman, longwall foreman, mine foreman and mine superintendent. His career later took him from Deer Creek, back to Kaiser, then to Cyprus Plateau and Willow Creek. He became a federal mine inspector with the Mine Safety and Health Administration in 1999. He worked in that capacity until he was severely hurt during the rescue attempt at Crandall Canyon Mine in 2007. The incident ended his career in mining and he retired in 2008.