This story is familiar to most faithful readers of this Monongah High Alumni blog.

Bob Kasper and John Olesky have been friends since they met in first grade at Sts. Peter and Paul School. That was 79 years ago.

They have remained in touch throughout the decades. At the age of 84 (Bob is 9 months younger than John), they exchange annual visits.

This was John’s annual visit to Bob’s summer home on Grand Lake in Presque Isle, Michigan. As usual, they played golf every day and talked about Monongah High and life since then.

In the fall, Bob comes to Ohio and they go to Mountaineer Field for a WVU football game.

Bob – aka “Satch” in his Monongah High days – and John – aka “Junebug” – will watch another WVU football game together during the 2017 football season.

They have exchanged the same two Christmas cards since 1955. The year of the mailing plus the names of all family members are added to the cards each year.

It serves as a non-Bible record of births, marriages and, yes, deaths.

Bob and his late wife, Pat, purchased their property on Grand Lake in Presque Isle, Michigan in 1989. Before that, they had property on the Lake Huron shore so they have a half-century of up-north living.

The Grand Lake home – Bob’s other home is in South Lyon, Michigan, near his children and five adopted grandchildren -- is only 2 miles from the Lake Huron shoreline.

 

There’s daughter Judith and son Steven and Judith’s daughter and Steven’s three daughters and a son.

Bob’s sister, Evelyn Kasper Boggess, Class of 1953, lives with husband Okey Boggess, a retired coal miner, in the childhood Kasper home on Willow Drive south of Monongah off U.S. 19.

John’s sister, Jackie Olesky Straight, Class of 1955, lives in Rivesville. John's children LaQuita, John Larry and Monnie Ann have provided him with seven grandchildren. And there are two great-grandsons.

After John’s wife, Monnie, passed away in 2004, John and Paula Tucker have shared a home and life for nearly 13 years.

 

Bob and John graduated from Monongah High in the Class of 1950 and attended Fairmont State together till John left for WVU for his final three years.

They have been together for 79 years. And so it will be till one or both of them pass away.