Alan Miller Jewelers Giveaway for Max, Ben Morrissey Earrings

Oregon, Ohio –
Alan Miller Jewelerson Navarre Avenue in Oregon, is holding a raffle to benefit the loved ones of Ben and Max Morrissey, who died from injuries sustained in fire at the BP-Husky refinery September 20.

In the weeks following the brothers’ deaths, business in Oregon picked up raffles and other fundraisers were held to provide financial support to the Morrissey family.

Cody Miller, store manager at Alan Miller Jewelers, said he has known the Morrissey family for years.

“The brothers, Max and Ben, were our customers and Max’s mother-in-law worked for us here, and we just thought we should do something,” Miller said.

What is the main prize in the raffle? Two lab-grown diamond earrings valued at $3,000.

Locals like Abby Sauerwein said it wasn’t the sparkly earrings that convinced her to buy a ticket. Her husband works at a refinery, and during a crisis, refinery families have to support each other, she said.

“It could happen to any of our families,” Sauerwein said. “It’s a chance we take every day when we send our husbands, our brothers, our sons, our sisters, anyone in our family to the refinery.”

Miller said he was struck by the same feeling Sauerwein described. The staff at Alan Miller Jewelers are proud of the fundraiser and the $3,000 they raised for the Morrissey family, but they decided they wanted to give Ben and Max’s wives and parents something more sentimental than money.

So they ordered engraved necklaces of the brothers as the family remembers them: smiling and happy.

“A little monument to them,” Miller said. “A little thing that they can always look at and remember and cherish and love and help remember their sons and husbands and fathers,” Miller said.

The fundraiser ends on October 22nd and the draw will take place on the same day.

United Steelworkers Local 1-346, the EPA and the Oregon Fire Department are conducting three separate investigations. WTOL 11 has reached out to all three, but has not received any updates at this time.

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