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| Olesky petting uncaged tiger in Thailand |
Olesky leads an interesting life
By John
Veasey, Times West Virginian
John Olesky grew up in Monongah and
attended the old Monongah High School.
It’s after he left Monongah, however, that
his life became interesting. And after he retired from newspaper work, it
became very interesting.
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| John with late wife Monnie Turkette Olesky |
This started him out on a newspaper career
that lasted until he retired from the Akron Beacon Journal in 1996.
From Morgantown, Olesky went to the
Williamson Daily News where he founded one of the all-state sports teams, for
baseball. After doing that alone for two years, he was appointed chairman and
it was brought under the auspices of the West Virginia Sportswriters
Association.
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| John with current mate Paula Tucker |
Not too long after that, Olesky moved to
the Dayton Daily News sports department under Si Burick, who was the Ohio
Sportswriter of the Year for seven different years.
The Monongah native then branches out —
traveling to St. Petersburg, Florida. to join the sports department there.
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| John & Monongah/WVU football player Dennis Jones |
He keeps in touch with most things still
going on in Monongah and he enjoys coming back to Morgantown for every football
game in Mountaineer Field.
Olesky could be called Monongah School’s
official secretary as he keeps the Times West Virginian alert to every death,
marriage and other thing going on in his hometown.
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| John with WVU basketball coach Bob Huggins |
He was married to Monnie Turkette Olesky
for many years until her passing. For more than 11 years, his mate has been
Paula Tucker.
He has traveled to many countries. His
favorite of them all? How about Thailand? He says in Thailand that he got to
pet uncaged tigers not restrained in any way, rode elephants and saw fantastic
Buddha statues, including the Reclining Buddha, which is solid gold and 100
feet long, and an 8-foot solid emerald Buddha.
“We also visited Anghor Wat in Cambodia,”
he says — a place not familiar to many Americans but Olesky can tell you all
about it.
“We visited Egypt,” he says, “Cruising down
the Nile, two weeks before the Arab Spring revolution.”
He says another memorable trip was to
Spain, Portugal and Morocco, where he had to flatten himself against the
merchandise to avoid a burro loaded with goods lumbering through the narrow
outdoor passageway.
“We also visited Italy and I went to the
house in Mione, where I walked through my grandmother’s 1848 stone house, and
Pellizzano.“
That must have been quite a thrill.
“Don’t forget the Sistine Chapel in Vatican
City,” Olesky says, “and the Pitti Palace built by the Medici family” that
houses hundreds of art masterpieces.
There are numerous other countries on his
list as well.
Other countries include China, to Beijing
and Shanghai; New Zealand and Australia, including walking the steepest
resident street in the world, 1,200 feet up Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New
Zealand; and Greece. Others include the Danube River from Budapest to
Nuremberg; France; Germany; Austria; Panama Canal; Costa Rica; Columbia;
England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland; and most of the Caribbean nations.
Olesky has a home in Ohio but he spends
part of the year now at The Villages, a community of 114,000 residents 55 and
older down in Central Florida.
“Those are off the top of my head,” he
says. ”My full list is in Ohio. But I know it’s 53 countries and 43 states. I
missed a few states in the Midwest.”
Here is story Ripley would not believe. Let
Olesky tell it:
This definitely comes under the “small
world” department.
I attended the monthly West Virginia Club
gathering Tuesday night at the Paradise Recreation Center in The Villages,
Florida. Because nearly all of the 400 club members were there, I had trouble
finding available seats for myself and Paula.
So I plopped down in one of the only two
chairs available. I turned to the woman across the table from me and, as usual,
asked: “Where are you from?”
Her reply: “Clarksburg. Where are you
from?”
My response: “Monongah.”
Her incredulous reaction: “Monongah! My
grandfather and grandmother were from Monongah.”
Me: “What were their names?”
She: “Mitch and Ann Pavlick.”
An even more incredulous Me: “My father
dated your grandmother after my mother and your grandfather both had passed
away.”
Mitch and Ann’s son, Junior Pavlick, a
Fairmont St. Peter’s High School graduate who moved to Arizona where he passed
away at age 65, was Michele Pavlick Todd’s father.
So there we were, two people who had never
met each other, seated across the table 864 miles from Monongah in The
Villages, Florida — joined together by being related to long-ago lovers.
What are the odds of that?
(The story above is typical of the kind
that John Olesky submits to the Times West Virginian.)
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| John & Monnie with grandchildren on Christmas Eve, 2003 |
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