With America reeling from the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Works Progress Administration by executive order in 1935 as part of his extensive New Deal.

With unemployment at a staggering 20%, the WPA provided jobs and income for more than 3.3 million Americans by 1938. They built or repaired roads and schools, built dams and even restored cemeteries.

By the time WPA was shut down in 1944, unemployment had dropped to 2%.

Federal Project Number One under the WPA hired artists, musicians, actors and writers who painted motivational murals on public buildings, sculpted monuments and performed music. This led to the creation of the National Foundation for the Arts.

The WPA also gave birth to the National Youth Administration, which from 1935 to 1943 provided 4.5 million young people between the ages of 16 and 25 with jobs, vocational training or a better education.

That’s where Mary Maxine Moosey, Class of 1934, comes into the picture. The government paid Mary $40 a month to find out what happened to Monongah High graduates.

Mary put together the “Who’s Who of Monongah High 1918-1935.” Her notes indicate that she planned to add information about MHS graduates through 1940, but 1935 is as far as she got with her NYA project.

She found out, for example, that 38 female and 9 male alumni became schoolteachers.

And that four alumni became doctors and one became a dentist. 17 became nurses.

And that Paul Kundratik, Class of 1933, was an adult education advisor for the National Youth Administration, another Monongah High grad paid by the government for NYA projects.

Mary Maxine Moosey did more than put together the “Who’s Who of Monongah High 1918-1935” project.

Elaine Hewitt Monell, Mary’s neighbor when they were growing up in Monongah, filled me in on the details.

After beginning at Fairmont State Teachers College, Mary became Dr. Mary Moosey, MD. Her brothers, Louis and George, also became doctors. 

I learned from Mary’s project that George, Class of 1923, became a surgeon after working his way through medical schools in Baltimore and Richmond, Virginia and married teacher Frances Stavely. They moved to Tacoma, Washington. 

And that Louis, Class of 1929, got his MD from the University of Richmond, then interned at Detroit Children’s Hospital and married.

Their cousin, Bill Lawson, also became a doctor in San Antonio, Texas.

Bill’s mother, Sadie, and Mary’s mother were sisters. Sadie Moosey Lawson, Class of 1924, married William D. Lawson, a mechanic and proprietor of Sadabilt Lunchroom. Their only child is William “Bill” Lawson, Jr., legendary during his Monongah High days for his skills with the drums.

Mrs. Moosey ran a clothing store. After fire destroyed the store, she sold clothes by going from house to house.

Sadly, Mary and a friend were killed in an auto/truck collision not long after she became a doctor.

Her sisters were Catherine Moosey Gleva, Class of 1940, who moved to Tacoma, Washington; and Elizabeth Moosey Fleming, Class of 1943, who resided in Mullins, South Carolina.

Bill Meredith, Class of 1957, remembers going to school with John Lynn Moosey, who moved to Ohio.  

Katharine Meredith Lafollette, Class of 1934, is Bill Meredith’s aunt. Katharine married Lawrence Lafollette and moved to Canton, Ohio. They had three children.

Roger Lawson, Class of 1961, Dr. Bill Lawson’s brother, lives in Michigan.

Jennifer Bradley Lawson is Class of 1965.

Mary Moosey’s work revealed that the guy who ran the Monongah theater was Hereford Currey, Class of 1925, brother of Ava Currey Cogar, who lived on Cottage Avenue and was the best friend of my mother, Lena Futten Olesky, who lived across U.S. 19 on Church Street. 

Ava was the laywoman assistant when St. Stanislaus Catholic School opened in Monongah in 1924. Later, the name was changed to Sts. Peter and Paul School since Our Lady of Pompeii, the Italian church, and St. Stanislaus, the Polish church, provided nearly all the children for the Catholic school on Church Street.

Also in the Class of 1925 was Bryan Currey, who was in the family’s Currey Motor Company business; Anne McKain, who taught at Thoburn School and was the organist at St. Stanislaus Church who asked me to stand at the far back of the balcony choir so that I wouldn’t throw everyone else off-key; and Helen Soyer Nagel, mother of Jeannie Nagel Viglianco, Class of 1949, Ted Nagel, Class of 1954, and Marty Nagel, Class of 1952.

Adam Michna provided a photo of a NYA marker at Holy Spirit Cemetery between the Polish and Italian sections. We knew it as Mount Calvary Cemetery when I was growing up in Monongah. 

But the NYA did work on the cemetery, which has a lot of the 1907 Monongah mines explosions victims in it among the 362 who died that day.

Monongah High’s first graduation, the Class of 1918, included Dr. Stanley Skarr, who after his George Washington Medical School education opened a practice in Davis, which is near the entrance to Blackwater Falls State Park. He married Blanche Mazir. They had a child, Dolores Jean.

Dr. Skarr’s 1918 classmates were Sylvia May Swisher, who became a schoolteacher living with her parents Charles Swisher and Alice Merrill Swisher in Stoney Lonesome before passing away in 1941 in Monongah; Fay Holbert, who became an accountant and married stenographer Martha Stoop; and Robert Jones, who became an insurance adjuster married to schoolteacher Veda Satterfield.

From the Class of 1919, Kathleen Shaver married traveling salesman Berry Wilson and moved to Huntington after teaching in Thoburn School for four years; Victor Higgs, Sr. married Edith Higgs of Davis Ridge and had a son, Victory Higgs, Jr.; Mattie Martin Clelland married John Clelland and moved to Catawba; Myra Martin Stewart married Glenn Stewart and moved to Beckley; Genevieve Fluharty Parrish moved to National City, California; David Anderson moved to Fairmont; and Raymond Jones moved to Denver.

In the Class of 1920 was Harry Jerome Hobbs, who became a science and chemistry teacher at Monongah High and president of the Natural History Society. He married Clarice R. Oakes in 1926. Harry passed away in 1960, Clarice in 1994. She taught in Monongah for nine years.

Also in the Class of 1920 was machinist Ralph Fox, who married Cora Coe three years later. They had four children, including Monongah High star fullback Robert Fox, and Doris, Shirley and Loretta Fox. 

Loretta June Fox McCombs was Harless McCombs’ widow when she passed away in 2017. Loretta’s siblings are Lois Fox Simmons, widow of Lewis “Fuzzy” Simmons; Doris Fox Crislip, Mary Jane Fox Hickman, Class of 1960, and Shirley Fox Wilson.

In the Class of 1921 was Madge Fleming, who married George Hartrick, later a West Monongah High principal before becoming a Cleveland WTAM radio announcer, a program director for Beckley WJLS radio station in 1947 and doing Boston Red Sox and Boston Braves baseball play-by-play for Boston WCOP.  The Marlboro, Massachusetts native also had been a principal at Asheville High School in Asheville, North Carolina.

In the Class of 1922, when Homer Toothman was principal, was Greta Martin Mike, who married barber Jimmy Mike. Greta started the Monongah High Alumni Reunion, which had its 95^th Reunion in 2018 as the longest continuously running high school reunion in West Virginia. Before marriage, she lived with her aunt and taught in Worthington, Chiefton and Bethlehem.

Among the other graduates is Adrian Currey McDaniel, Class of 1923, who married legendary Monongah Streetcar Station Master Ted McDaniel. Their children are Jim McDaniel, Class of 1960, who married Mary Bolin McDaniel, who grew up in Monongah; Mary Jane McDaniel Pritchard; Joann McDaniel Huff, Class of 1949; and Donald McDaniel. Their grandmother was Martha Maude Fleming Currey.

Mary Jane and Charles Pritchard’s daughters are Jane “Nene” Pritchard Moore, Class of 1975, who married Henry Moore; Beth Pritchard Brooks, Class of 1978, who married Rick Brooks; and Jonna Pritchard Barnett, 1980 North Marion grad after going to Monongah High for three years, who married Shinnston High grad Brad Barnett.

Donald’s daughter is Barbara, who lives in Germany. Jim McDonald learned about her existence and met her decades after World War II ended and Donald had passed away.

Joann’s children are Robert, Valerie and Melissa.

In the Class of 1923 was Harry Leeper, who became a historian (and author of “History of Monongah and Monongah School”) and founding member of the National Thespian Society, established in 1929 by Alpha Psi Omega at Fairmont State Normal School (later, Fairmont State College). 

Harry designed the Thespian Society’s insignia and was the first editor of its publication, “The High School Thespian.”  Harry, Fairmont East drama teacher Paul Opp and Ernest Bavely of Monongah, Opp’s secretary, were the primary forces behind forming the National Thespian Society at Fairmont West and Fairmont East. 

Natrona County High School in Casper, Wyoming was Troupe 1, West was Troupe 2 and East was Troupe 3 nationally. Fairmont was the Thespian Society’s first national headquarters.

In the Class of 1926 was Marguerite Tropea, the daughter of grocery store owners Tony and Rose Loss Tropea who married Simon Matthews, and was the mother of Simon Paul Matthews, Jr., Class of 1956, Rose Matthews Ilich and Muggy Matthews Stottlemire; and Fred Bice, who worked on the Monongah dam as part of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project. 

In the Class of 1927 was George Crislip, who worked in a Monongah mine but died in an automobile accident before Mary Moosey’s 1935 project was published.

In the Class of 1928 was Geneva Brumage, who later became a legendary and super-nice Monongah High typing and shorthand teacher. It was Miss Brumage who gave me a foundation in typing that I relied on throughout my 43-year newspaper career.

In the Class of 1929 was Weadon Koon, who operated his farm on Swisher Hill. Bob Kasper, Class of 1950, remembers working for Weadon when Bob was about 12 years old for $1 a day for working in and around the barn with the unexpected bonus of observing a bull servicing a cow. Weadon, as Bob remembers it, had 5 or 6 children.

It was not Weadon but another Coon, with a “C,” who got caught up in the reins of a runaway horse and was yanked off his buggy and dragged to death near the Union Hall in Monongah. I recall that scene vividly as a child.

Bob Kasper’s sister, Helen Kasper, was in the Class of 1933. She married and moved to Dearborn, Michigan, which is why Bob wound up with Ford Motor, eventually being on the carmaker’s side of the table in negotiations with the United Automobile Workers union. 

Helen and Bob’s sister is Evelyn Kasper Boggess, Class of 1953, who lives in her childhood home with husband Okey Boggess, a retired coal miner, not far from St. Barbara’s Memorial Nursing Home.

In the Class of 1930 was Maurine Hines, who became a teacher and married Casper Boone, a fire boss at the Omar mine in Omar, West Virginia.

In the Class of 1931 was Regina D’Ariano, who did adult teaching in Monongah High and lived with her brother, Roy D’Ariano, an Italian shoemaker who published his song, “Lover, Come Back to Me.” 

Regina passed away in 1993 and is buried in Monongah’s Mount Calvary Cemetery. So is Roy, who had his 100^th birthday before his 1999 demise.

Regina and Roy D'Ariano came to America in 1912. Their books included "La Piccola Cantatrice," "David and Ruth," "The Princess Under Seven Veils" and “I’ll Strike It Rich,” a novel about an Italian immigrant who comes to America that was published in 1963 by Exposition Press. 

Regina and Roy’s Italian-American ballards, poems, lyrics and melodies are available on Amazon.com .

Also in the Class of 1931 was a physician, Dr. Earl Ray Kinney, who married Mildred June Snider Kinney. He was a son of Charles Luther Kinney and Christie Stiles Kinney. 

Dr. Kinney’s siblings were Grace Kinney Mead and Blanche Kinney, both deceased. He passed away in 1959 at the age of 43. He is buried in Fairmont’s Woodlawn Cemetery.

Another 1931 graduate was Virginia Tropea, who married Pete Neri and taught grade school in Monongah.

In the Class of 1932 was Dorothy Rogers, who married Monongah banker Fay Wilson, Class of 1922. Their children were John William “Bill” Wilson and Betty Lynn, who married Monongah High football coach Jim Feltz, at the helm for Monongah High state titles in 1952 and 1955 before Betty and Jim’s son, Jay Feltz, quarterbacked the 1973 Lions to another state championship.

Dorothy passed away in 2007, Fay in 1980. Her parents were Thomas and Ollie Boone Rogers. 

Thomas and Ollie's other children were Rita Slayton, Juanita Esketh, Ann Eicher, Betty Leach and sons Dodd. W.F., McCue, Harry, Brentford and Reidy Rogers.

Also in the Class of 1932 was Pauline Calabrase Hewitt, who married Charles E. Hewitt. 

Their children are Elaine Hewitt Monell, Class of 1949, Class of 1945 grad Raymond “Soak” Monell’s widow; Charles E. Hewitt, Jr.; and Gloria Hewitt Kielbaso, who married James Kielbaso. 

Pauline’s siblings are Minnie Oliverio, Josephine Swiger, Navy veteran and WVU graduate Nick Calabrase (who married Clarince Maunz Calabrase before passing away April 21, 2018 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina) and another brother and two other sisters who predeceased her. 

Pauline was cafeteria manager at Stivers High School in Dayton for almost three decades.

Also in the Class of 1932 was Helen Olesky, sister of my father, John W. Olesky, Sr. and Frances Olesky Fazio, who married Renzy Fazio and had the Fazio Grocery on Jackson Street. Helen married Steve Kerekes, a Carolina coal miner.

In the Class of 1933 was George Pigott, who taught combat pilots how to fly in World War II, and Josephine Agnes Michna, who became Sister Rose and taught at Sts. Peter and Paul School.

In the Class of 1934 with Mary Maxine Moosey, who put together the “Who’s Who in Monongah High 1918-1935,” was Mary Lee, who married a Bennett and was Monongah News correspondent for the Fairmont Times, which I did during my Monongah High and WVU student days as a precursor to my 43-year newspaper career.

Also in the Class of 1934 was Katherine Meredith LaFollette, whose parents were Howard and Grace Grove Meredith. Her three children were Tom, Bob and Larry LaFollette. Tom and Larry are deceased. Bob and his wife, Eileen, live near Lewisville, in Monroe County, Ohio.

Katherine’s siblings, all deceased, were James Meredith, Gertrude Meredith Mason, Inza Meredith Thomas, Josephine Meredith Scott and Charles Meredith, who married Pauline Jane Meredith (her maiden name; they were distant cousins).

Charles and Pauline’s seven children are Bill Meredith, Class of 1957, whose birth name is Charles William Meredith and who is married to Clarksburg Washington Irving graduate Roleta Meredith; Pat Meredith Wills, Class of 1950, married to former Fairmont West athlete Don Wills; and, all deceased, Jack Meredith, Class of 1943; Howard Joe Meredith, Class of 1945; Marion Jean Meredith Riddle, Class of 1945; Marjorie Delores Meredith Holt, Class of 1947; and Bonnie Meredith.

In the Class of 1935 was Nick Eates, Ruth Grimes Domico and Christine Tropea Jacobin.

Nick worked at Consol coal mines and Four States mine as fire boss and mine foreman. He was an instructor for Consol’s mine rescue team. After the mines closed, he worked and retired from the U.S. Postal Service as custodian in Fairmont. He died in the late 90s.

Nick’s siblings are Mike Eates, Class of 1948; Joe Eates, Class of 1945, married to Ann DeMary Eates, Class of 1945; Tony Eates, Class of 1950, married to Lucy Cann Eates; Dominick Eates, Class of 1946, who married Mary Larry Eates; Mary Eates and Angie Eates.

Ruth Grimes married Julius “GeeGee” Domico. They lived next door to the Fazio Grocery on Jackson Street. 

Ruth and GeeGee were best friends of my parents, John W. Olesky, Sr. and Lena Futten Olesky. Because both couples were married in January, when the March of Dimes dance was held every January at the Union Hall in Monongah to honor polio victim President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, they celebrated their wedding anniversaries together year after year at the UMW Hall near Pepsi’s service station at the foot of the hill to Stoney Lonesome.

Christine married Leo Jacobin, Class of 1933. Their son, also named Leo Jacobin, is a 1959 Monongah High graduate. Christine’s sister, Marguerite Tropea, was a 1926 graduate. 

Christine and Leo made robes and slippers that they donated to Fairmont General Hospital patients for more than 20 years. 

Christine and Marguerite’s other siblings were Vincent Tropea; Virginia Tropea Neri and Helen Tropea Bieglecki.

St. Anthony, Monongah’s first Catholic church, began in 1893 in a building that later housed the Tropea Grocery on Camden Avenue. Before that, Irish-Catholics assembled at the home of Jim McKain on Camden Avenue. 

St. Stanislaus Church was erected in 1904. After fire destroyed St. Stanislaus’ wooden structure, the brick St. Stanislaus Kostka Church was constructed adjacent to land that eventually housed St. Peter and Paul Catholic School higher up the hill.