Saints P&P preserve us; it’s flashback time!

Leatrice Yokay Greaser, Class of 1950, who lives in Fairmont, loaned me this 1998 Fairmont Times tribute to Sts. Peter and Paul School, which had just closed.

It brings back many warm memories.

In the grades 1-3 photo is Rosemary Raymond Pagliaro, Carmen’s wife, who lives in Fairmont. 

Her brother is the late Bob Raymond, also of Fairmont, and a former Monongah High football player who is in the grades 6-8 photo.

Bobby and I were great friends who lived across from each other on Church and Thomas streets before either one of us showed up at Sts. Peter and Paul. In fact, because I attended a year before Bobby, he ran away from home and slinked into my classroom during one of my first days in first grade. The nuns chuckled and returned Bobby to his mother, Mary Dudiak Raymond, who was married to Angelo Raymond.

When Consolidation Coal Company sold the houses they were renting to the miners because they knew they were going to shut down the mine in a few years, my parents, Lena Futten Olesky and John W. Olesky, bought the Church Street home that the Raymonds were renting because it had indoor plumbing and our Thomas Street house did not. The Raymonds moved to Frogtown, buying a house and running a tavern below their home.

In the same row in the photo are Carol and Rosemary Lushinsky Tetrick, who lived two doors away from the Olesky family on Church Street.

Then there’s David Carlot, who played football at Monongah High and operated a store where his parents, Julie and Gene Carlot, once had the world’s greatest hot dogs, or so I thought till I damn near choked to death on one (my fault; you can’t bite half a weiner in one gulp when you’re about 7 years old because the throat can’t let it slide down, but wedges it).

Dave’s sister, Joyce Carlot Lellilo, passed away and is in the 6-8 photo.

And Henry “Dinkle” Martin, who kicked the game-winning extra point that gave Monongah the 1955 state football title.

And Lorraine Koloskie, daughter of a Marion County deputy sheriff, Frank Koloskie, who tried his best to keep the facietously named Gang That Terrorized Marion County from doing permanent damage to itself. Frank showed up at our house with the shoes I left behind when the cops caught us swimming in the Fairmont Field Club swimming pool at 3 a.m. When I saw my Dad standing next to me in my upstairs bedroom when I woke up the next morning, I knew I hadn't gotten away with my exploits by walking home barefoot for three miles on blacktop road.

Lorraine and my sister, Jackie Olesky Straight, who lives in Rivesville, were best friends at Sts. Peter and Paul and Monongah High. Lorraine passed away tragically in the south at a young age and left behind too many daughters.

In the grades 6-8 photo there is Eugene “Hammer” Tartell, center on Monongah High’s football team, who lives in Dayton, Ohio.

And Ernie “Frog” Manzo, who lived in Stony Lonesome and caddied with me at Fairmont Field Club. He got the “Frog” appellation because he could make a noise like one. Sadly, Ernie has passed away.

And Billy Maskers, also known as Billy Cominski, brother of Melvin Kominski, both Monongah High athletes who lived on Camden Avenue. Their grandparents, who reared them, were close friends with my grandparents, Mary Peremba Olesky and Martin Olesky, of Mogilno, Poland, who lived on Walnut Street (later, across the street on Pike Avenue) with their daughter and son-in-law, Helen Olesky Kerekes and Steve Kerekes.

And Barbara Skarzinski, who lived with her sister Yanit so far out Camden Avenue that you were going down the hill and out of town after you passed their house on U.S. 19.

And Jackie Olesky Straight, my sister.

And Evelyn Kasper Boggess, who lives in the home she grew up in with her parents in the Frogtown section of Monongah off U.S. 19 after you drive south past the Union Hall and Pepsi Meffe’s service station. 

Her brother is Bob Kasper, who lives in South Lyon and Presque Isle, Michigan (summer home on Grand Lake), my best friend since first grade at Sts. Peter and Paul.

And the late Josephine Catania, who lived two doors away from the Olesky family on Thomas Street before she moved to Covina, California with her siblings Angelo, Alex and Mary Catania Heywood (sister Pauline Catania Allard lives in San Antonio, Texas with husband Omer Allard).

And Father John McNulty, the bishop’s solution to Monongah Italians demanding an Italian priest for Our Lady of Pompeii and Monongah Poles demanding a Polish priest for St. Stanislaus. 

The bishop sent an Irish priest to say Mass at both churches, at a time when my Aunt Frances Olesky Fazio, because she married Renzy Fazio, went from belonging to the St. Stanislaus Ladies Society and always going to church there one Sunday to, as Mrs. Renzy Fazio, belonging to the Our Lady of Pompeii Ladies Society and going only to Pompeii Church the next Sunday.

It was as if Polish and Italian Catholics belonged to different religions till the bishop had had enough and thought it was time to bring everyone under the same umbrella.

And, most of all, there is Sister Agnes, who gave me such a solid foundation in grammar that I made a 43-year newspaper career out of it. I've told the tale often, but Sister Agnes would read Nancy Drew Mysteries to us in grades 6-8 but, when it got to the good part, put the book on the shelf, forcing us to read it to find out how it turned out. I was the designated reader of my classmates.

Thanks, Leatrice, for bringing back a lot of good memories from way, way back. As valedictorian of the 1946 Sts. Peter and Paul class (I only had to beat out 8 people and was fortunate that Jeanie Nagel Viglianco, a widow living in Fairmont, got double-promoted out of my class because she was pretty terrific academic competition for me), I am grateful.

If you have memories of any one in the Sts. Peter and Paul photos, email John Olesky at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com and I’ll add them to this Monongah High Alumni blog. So many of them became part of the fabric of your life at Monongah High, even if you went to Thoburn or East Monongah or outside Monongah during your primary education.