The Atlas Cement Company Memorial Museum, Northampton, has visitors come from across the globe: a delegation from China, a bishop and groups from Burgenland, Austria, Spain, England, Germany, South America, Canada, Mexico and more.

Men on motorcycles arrived Aug. 22 to raise funds for a memorial paying tribute to 31 cement company employees who lost their lives March 26, 1942, during an explosion in a quarry in Sandts Eddy.

Richard Grucela, chair of the Lower Mount Bethel Civic Association, is heading a fundraising memorial campaign established for the Lehigh Portland Cement Company employees. More than two dozen bikers, many who work at several of the five active cement mills, participated in a poker run benefiting the project.

Greeting the riders and Grucela at the Northampton-based museum, the only one in the United States focused on the past and present cement industry, were Ed Pany, the museum’s curator, and associates Sally Madden and Larry Oberly.

Grucela said the centerpiece of the memorial will be an eight-foot-high, six-foot-wide granite stone with a bronze tablet bearing the names of the 31 men who perished. It will be at Church Hill Cemetery, the highest point of the burial grounds that faces the distant quarry. Framed by mature trees at the rear, the memorial site will also include pavers, a retaining wall, solar lighting and a flagpole.

With work now under way, Grucela said he expects a ceremony dedicating the memorial could take place as early as mid-October.

Although their paths have not crossed until recent months, Grucela and Pany have similar backgrounds. Both were high school teachers and each holds an elective office. Pany is a borough councilman. Grucela, now a state representative, had been a Lower Mount Bethel Township supervisor and a Northampton County councilman. Each said they raise funds for their causes without using taxpayer dollars.

“The goal was $15,000, which we reached, and now it is $20,000,” Grucela said, adding that donated manpower has been key to the project.

The poker run raised $1,200 and received two sizable donations, one for $5,000 from two brothers whom Pany had in class and one from a cement company.

Pany has not only researched what happened the day of the explosion, but also has spoken to plant workers, one of whom found an ankle bone near his home. It was the worst tragedy in the years of the cement companies in the Lehigh Valley.

With World War II raging at the time, Grucela said at one of the largest buildings in Easton, windows shattered from the explosion. Individuals were told to return home, thinking first the enemy arrived with “the war at their doorsteps,” he said.

“We will probably never know what happened that day,” Pany said. “Only God knows, but we all could pay our respects.”