Cottrill to visit Ohio, West Virginia friends

“Look out, Bob Cottrill’s coming!” There was a time when that cry put fear in the hearts of Monongah High’s football opponents. Bob was a hard-hitting ball-carrier who flattened and turned out the lights for more than one Lions opponent.

But this time the shoutout is a pleasant one. 

Within 2 weeks, Bob Cottrill, Class of 1951, will be driving from his Melbourne, Florida home to Ohio and West Virginia.

Bob will be having what he labels a “Friendly Reunion” in Northfield Center, Ohio, which is between Akron and Cleveland, on Tuesday, Aug. 26 at the home of a friend. He expects 20-25 people from his life in Ohio to be there.

He’ll be in Fairmont Aug. 28-29 to gather in Muriale’s Restaurant in Fairmont with his brother and sister. 

Since his last visit to Marion County, when Bob visited former Monongah High state champ football coach the late Earl Keener (1968 with Alabama coach Nick “Brother” Saban at quarterback and 1969 with Kerry Marbury returning while Brother began his Kent State football career) at St. Barbara’s Nursing Home in Monongah, four people in Marion County that Bob knew have died.

Between Ohio and Fairmont, Bob will be going to Cottrill’s Mountain, 20 acres he owns near Burnsville, West Virginia, for a few days of fun with his grandchildren and ATVs.

The home for the Northfield Center cookout belongs to former Bedford High School principal Dave Pumpa and his wife, Nan, who knew Bob when both were at Fairmont State. Nan was a swimmer and diver for the Falcons.

Bob was reunited with Nan and Dave when he was in Northfield, Ohio as school principal and later with the State of Ohio Board of Education involved in school financing and in 1982-88 handling such things as bus routing while assistant superintendent of Brunswick, Ohio schools.

Bob’s grandson, Chris Barnes, son of Bob’s daughter, Rhonda, also will be there. Chris works for Fidelity Mortgage and Title out of Akron, which is about 10 miles from Akron. 

Bob also has sons Rob in Atlanta and Randy in Tampa.

Chris married Shannon in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, in June. The families rented two large houses on the beach. Everything was sunny till a thunderstorm hit during the ceremony, forcing an indoor repeat. Bob enjoyed the family outing anyway.

Some of the Northfield Center guests will include those who conducted a memorial in Macedonia for Bob’s first wife, Barbara Jean Henderson Cottrill, a 1955 Fairmont Nursing School graduate who died in 2007. Barbara was nursing manager for Suburban Cleveland Hospital, which later was absorbed into the Cleveland Clinic system.

Bob had March visitors from his Monongah High days to his Melbourne home: Tony Orsini, Class of 1946, and his wife, Mary Louise Baker Orsini, in the Class of 1948, who drove south from their Swisher Hill home. 

Bob will meet his second wife, Thelma, on his way back south, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where Thelma lived for a few decades till she was widowed for a second time. Thelma and Barbara were friends for years. Thelma and Bob married in 2011.

They also will visit Barbara’s brother in Greenville, South Carolina.

If you want to catch up with Bob, which might not be easy, and are in Ohio or West Virginia at the right time, you might try calling him at (321) 432-6683.