Susie Williams Dodd, who watched her father coach Jerry West at East Bank High School, passed away Sunday, September 3 in a Leesburg, Florida hospital near The Villages, Florida home where she moved to from West Virginia.

 

One day Paula and I went to play cards in the Chula Vista Recreation Center in The Villages.

 

When Susie walked in, Paula’s Akron St. Mary’s High School classmate Carol Helfer said:

 

“There’s another West Virginian.” 

I asked Susie where she was from originally. She said East Bank. 

 

I said, “Oh, the land of Jerry West,” who led East Bank to the West Virginia high school basketball title.

 

Susie said, “Yes, and my father is Roy Williams.” Roy was Jerry’s coach at East Bank.

Jerry, of course, became WVU’s best player ever, an all-time NBA Hall of Famer and, indeed, the guy whose silhouette is on the NBA logo.

 

Susie said she was born in Charleston, West Virginia, just down the road from East Bank.

 

“What hospital?,” I asked.

“It doesn’t exist any more,” Susie replied.

 

Could it be, I wondered . . . “McMillan?,” I asked.

 

Yes. The same hospital where my older daughter, LaQuita, was born in 1956 when I was a sportswriter for the Charleston Daily Mail while Jerry was starring at East Bank.

LaQuita is a superb teacher in Aurora, Ohio and the daughter of John and the late Monnie Turkette Olesky of Cinderella, West Virginia, a Williamson suburb.

Susie also was a schoolteacher, just like LaQuita. Another small-world coincidence.

It make me (Mr.) Clutch my heart.

 

As WVU fans know, Mr. Clutch was Jerry’s nickname because he came through in the clutch so often with the game on the line at East Bank, WVU and the Los Angeles Lakers.

 

Roy Williams is deceased. Roy’s wife, Wilhelmina, Susie’s mother, taught third grade at East Bank Grade School.

 

Susie moved from East Bank to her home in The Villages.

 

Jerry, the fifth of six children born into his Chelyan, West Virginia family, was All-State at East Bank for three years in a row, became the best basketball player in WVU history and came within 2 points of giving the Mountaineers a national title in 1959.

 

East Bank was so enamored of Jerry that on March 24 of every year the town name was changed to “West Bank” to memorialize the town’s most famous son.

Jerry scored 28 points and had 11 rebounds when WVU lost to California by one point, 71-70, in the 1959 national title game, the closest that WVU ever came to winning the national title, unless you count the 1942 National Invitation Tournament, which was more prestigious than the NCAA title back then before the NCAA tourney gained momentum.

In recent years, Jerry said: "I don't talk about it very much. Sometimes, you don't like to conjure unpleasant memories."

It still hurts Jerry more than it does Mountaineer fans that he couldn’t bring a national title to his beloved native state.

It was brain cancer that finally stilled Susie’s Mountaineer spirit.

John and Paula spend their winters at Paula’s home in The Village. In warmer weather, they share a Tallmadge, Ohio home.

 

Sue and John get together each winter at the West Virginia Club meetings in The Villages, a retirement development for 120,000 aged 55 and over home owners near Ocala, Orlando and Tampa.

John gave Sue the phone number of the late Mickey Furfari, legendary West Virginia sportswriter, and gave Mickey the phone number for Sue. Mickey called Sue and wrote a column about Jerry West's high school coach's daughter, who saw the NBA Logo before he even began his spectacular WVU career.

Susie saved the clipping as a treasure for her scrapbook. It made me feel good to get Mickey, my friend since my WVU School of Journalism days in the 1950s, and Sue together. Now both are reunited in the Next World.

Susie was involved in another remarkable coincidence in my life.

Paula and I met Susie in one of our earlier winter stays in The Villages, where 120,000 senior citizens enjoy every day by staying active. We had reunions with her every winter at the monthly West Virginia Club meetings in the Paradise Recreation Center not far from Paula’s Lady Lake house. We chatted with Susie in February at the West Virginia Club meeting. That is the last time we saw her.

 

I attended the monthly West Virginia Club gathering at the Paradise Recreation Center and, 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 Pavlik.”

 

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 Pavlik, a Fairmont St. Peter’s High School graduate who moved to Arizona where he passed away at age 65, was Michele Pavlik 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?

Dad and Ann were together constantly until black lung finally did what two mine cave-ins couldn't -- killed him.

 

Junior’s wife, who remarried after divorcing the younger Pavlik, passed away.

 

Monongah’s Ruth Domico, married to Julius “GeeGee” Domico, nudged Ann Hanus Pavlik and my dad together. Ruth and GeeGee, like my parents – John W. Olesky, Sr. and Lena Futten Olesky, who lived on Church Street – celebrated their wedding anniversary every January at the March of Dimes Dance in the Union Hall with my parents.

 

Ruth also was good friends with Ann, so she was the matchmaker for her good friend and her late good friend’s husband.

 

Ann’s parents were the owners of the Hanus Grocery across U.S. 19 from Thoburn School in the same building just off Jackson Street as the Brzuzy family’s PNA Tavern and the Joe Hanus Garage operated by Ann’s brother. Rose was Ann and Joe’s sister.

 

Also at that reunion was Susie. Paula took my photo with two remarkable coincidences in my life.

My condolences to Lynn Dodd, her husband who was at her side through all of Susie’s travails. And may you teach the Angels in the Choir of Heaven how to sing “Country Roads,” Susie.

I contacted Jerry West to let him know that his favorite high school coach’s daughter has passed away. I am sure that he will respond appropriately, as he did when Susie’s father passed away. Susie remembered Jerry’s flowers fondly when she spoke to me about it.

Beech Bottom Community Christian Church, where Susie was a member and in the choir, will be the appropriate site for her final services. It is near Wellsburg, West Virginia.

Susie’s obituary:

W. Sue Dodd, 69, of The Villages, Fla., and formerly of Wellsburg, W.Va., died Sept. 3rd in a Leesburg, Fla., nursing home.

She was the daughter of Roy and Wilhelmina Williams of East Bank, W.Va.

She is survived by her husband, Lynn W. Dodd of 48 years; daughter, Carolyn Dodd of Cuddy, Pa.; a son, Nathan Dodd (Cecilia), granddaughter, Maya Dodd of Lefthand, W.Va.; also sisters, Jean Ann Kuntz (Don) the Villages, Fla. and Rosemary Gaddy (Alan) in Milpitas, Calif.

Sue was a graduate of East Bank, W.Va. High school, Marshall University, and West Virginia University. An elementary schoolteacher and reading specialist for the Brooke County School system for 30 years, her love was teaching and helping the underpriviedged children in her classes.

There will be services held at a later date at the Beech Bottom Christian Church, W.Va., where she was a member and in the choir. She loved singing for the Lord and his children. Sue was also a member of the North Lake Presbyterian Church.

Memorial contributions may be made in Sue’s name to Beech Bottom Community Church . Box 96 Beech Bottom, WV 26030.