CATCHING UP WITH

John Paul Gotses

John Paul Gotses, the first guidance counselor in Monongah High history, in 1972, is a retired coal company executive, home health agency director and adjunct faculty member at Fairmont State and Pioneer Career & Technoly Center in Shelby, Ohio.

The St. Peter High graduate’s father, Dr. John Paul Gotses, was a dialysis expert at WVU Medical Center in Morgantown.

Barbara Fleming Marsh, widow of Farmington #9 mine explosion victim Dennis Toler, wrote:

“How I loved that man (Dr. Gotses)! He took care of me for more years than I care to remember. We lost one terrific physician when he took down his shingle.”

Dr. Gotses did his residency in general surgery at Fort Howard Veterans Hospital in Baltimore before returning to Fairmont to practice surgery.

Helen Gotses Rutherford, who once owned the upscale Palace Restaurant in Fairmont with husband Charles Mitchell Rutherford, became a receptionist in her brother Dr. Gotses’ office after Helen’s husband passed away.

Barbara is the Monongah News columnist for the Fairmont Times.

Son John Paul got his master’s in counseling and guidance at WVU to qualify for the Monongah post under principal Earl Keener, who coached Monongah High to the 1968 and 1969 state football championships after being an assistant to Jim Feltz when Monongah High won the 1952 and 1955 state grid crowns. Both Keener and Feltz are deceased Fairmont State alumni. Keener was a hard-running back for the Falcons. I remember him laying out a defender because Earl ran at him so hard.

At my request, son John Paul provided me with more family details:

“My mother was born on Chieftain hill in the coal camp. Her maiden name was Julia Ann Skormisely. Resock is the name they called the family in the camp. I think my mother graduated from Monongah High around 40 or 41.”

Julia passed away in 2014 at Fazio’s Eldercare in Stoney Lonesome, run by Cora Fazio, who married David Fazio, son of my dad’s sister, Frances Olesky Fazio, and her husband Renzy Fazio. Frances and Renzy ran Fazio Grocery at the bottom of Jackson Street hill.

Julia was a daughter of the late Frank and Helena Sirockman Skormsley. Her deceased siblings are Charles Clark, Steve Skormsley, John Skormisley, Pat Floyd, Helen Parker, Ann Yeager and Mary McDonald.

John Paul’s sister and Julia’s daughter is Mary Leann Beveridge of Fairmont, widow of Gary Beveridge. Julia’s sister is Irene Cavrich of Fairmont.

Julia gleefully made peanut butter Easter eggs at the Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Monongah.

Son John Paul continued:

“My uncles Steve and John Skormisley graduated from Monongah high.

“I was born in 1944 while my dad was in the University of Virginia Medical School. I was born in Richmond and was the first child born in my dad’s graduating class.

“In 1972 I was the first guidance counselor at Monongah High. Earl Keener was the principal then after ending his coaching career. I remember Bruce Zentz (whose widow is Amelia Shenasky Zentz, still alive on Shenasky Lane in Monongah) often stopping by the high school.

“I don’t know what years my uncles graduated from high school, but I think that my mother and the two brothers were the only ones out of all the siblings. The other siblings, Theresa (Pat Floyd), Mary McDonald, Helen Parker, Ann Yeager and Charles Clark, all left home in their teens to go to work and marry.

“When my grandfather Frank Skormisley died in 1962 he was the oldest living male in Monongah. When my grandmother Helenka died at 95 she was the oldest living woman in the town of Monongah. I can’t remember her year of death.

“My cousin Ronald Skormisley has all the dates of the siblings deaths and their spouses. He would be the son of John and Virginia Skormisley. Most of that family except for their children are all deceased and some of them also are gone.

“On the Gotses side very few are left. Myself and my younger sister are the only children left from the union of Paul and Julia. Our brother Richard died when he was 68.”

Richard had a child, Robert, by former wife Carol Gorey Gotses, who is in his 40’s and lives at home with his mother Carol and his aunt Irene Gordy. Carol, who lives in Fairmont, is a sibling of Irene Gorey of Fairmont, Robert Gorey and the late Loraine Gorey Phillips Knobel, who passed away in January 2017.

John Paul Gotses has a son, also John Paul Gotses, who lives in Fairmont and works at WVU’s Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown. The Ruby John Paul has a son, Shawn, who obviously is John Paul Gotses’s grandson.

John Paul the guidance counselor’s Aunt Jeri was Lelia Morrison’s daughter and is half-sister to Sally Woods Tarley and the late Danny Woods, former mayor of Monongah who loved his Harley Davidson motorcyles. Jeri’s husband is Steve.

Frank and Helenka Skormisley’s youngest child, Irene, married Louis “Slock” Cavrich.

Steve and Jeri Skormisley’s daughter David Henry. Their children are Andy and Stephanie. They lived in New York City. David Henry owned the Henry Oil Company in Morgantown, the Pennzoil franchise along the Monongalia river at Star City.