DUANE HARBERT WILL BE VISITING FAMILY & FRIENDS IN WEST VIRGINIA IN JUNE

 

Duane Harbert, Class of 1951, will be making a nostalgia trip to West Virginia in June from his Marlon, New Jersey home.

He will be attending a belated graveside memorial service in Parsons on Sunday, June 27 for Duane’s wife, Mary, followed by a catered barbeque at a local city park.

Duane’s immediate family and friends will be there.

The next day Duane and “some of my New Jersey friends” and maybe some grandchildren will take a memory tour that will including Harbert’s Fort outside of Lumberport, Worthington (where Duane grew up), Monongah and places in Fairmont where his late wife Mary lived before she married Duane.

Duane will be staying in Fairmont the next night and plans a reunion with wife and husband Arlene and Okey Edgell for dinner at Say-Boy, where my father, John W. Olesky, Sr., introduced me to my first ribeye steak, which became a lifetime obsession for me. Say-Boy will provide the catered dinner for the J&J&Lions Get-Together July 17 in the Monongah Town Hall – dinner at 6 p.m., music from 7 to 9 p.m. The J&J stands for John Olesky (that’s me) and Jackie Olesky Straight, my sister who lives in Rivesville.

 

If you want to attend, check and print up and fill out the Registration form on this blog and mail it to me so that it is in my hands by June 26 because I have to let Say-Boy, through intermediary Monongah Councilwoman Susan Sanders, know how many will be attending and what meals they prefer.

 

If you do decide to show up Duane has advice for you:

 

“Enjoy the party on the 17th and tell any of our friends that happen to be there to be careful.  In today's society they might end up in jail for doing some of the ‘Fun’ stuff we did back in the day.”

 

Duane is referring to the gang we ran around with during our Monongah High days which I facietiously call The Gang That Terrorized Marion County (we didn’t, really, but we were stupid and got into trouble). Our most legendary prank was swimming in the Fairmont Field Club pool at 2 a.m. Police showed up. We all ran but, since Duane’s father’s car (owned by Thoburn principal Frank Harbert), was still parked on the road nearby the police knew who we were.

 

I walked home barefoot from Country Club to my Monongah home, about 3 miles. But the next morning when I woke up my father was standing over me with a scowl and my shoes that I had abandoned at Fairmont Field Club and that Marion County Deputy Sheriff Koloskie, father of the late Lorraine Koloskie, my sister Jackie Olesky Straight’s best friend at Monongah High, had returned to our house. They gathered all of us together in Fairmont at a Consolidation Coal Company office and the police did a Scared Straight routine with us.

 

The Gang That Terrorized Marion County included Duane, me, Bob Kasper (my friend for 83 years who lives in South Lyon, Michigan), Ronnie “Coolie” Delovich (who got us into more trouble than anyone else in the gang), Anthony “Plumber” DeMary, Jr., Tony Eates (who still lives in Fairmont with wife Lucy Cann Eates), Frank “Bruno” Franze who lives in Slidell, Louisiana after out-living 2 wives, the late Lawrencen “Sonny” Godby, Donald “Jake” Halpenny who lives in Fairmont, the late Joe Manzo, Steven “Bucky” Satterfield who is a retired West Virginia Highway Patrolman who lives in St. Albans and the late Jim “Judge” Starcher.

 

Okey Edgell is Class of 1944 and Arlene Marteney Edgell is Class of 1951, which means she graduated from Monongah High a year after I did. Just a kid.