With Personnel administrative assistant Susan Staron Sanders, Class of 1971, the angel of Thomas Street, digging into a project, The Grinch doesn’t stand a chance in Monongah.

Susan reports that the new Monongah Christmas street lights are paid in full and that $1,584 was raised in one week at the bazaar and other events. That adds eight Christmas street lights to the seven that the town of White Hall donated to Monongah last year.

FIFTEEN Christmas street lights will dazzle the good folks of Monongah and their visitors.

The Charge of the Lights Brigade has accomplished an awesome task.

Susan wrote:

“Wow is all I can say! What a way to finish out the year.

“The bazaar was wonderful thanks to all the vendors who supported us and came out with wonderful treasures to sell.

“A special thank you to my guys/Elves Josh Scritchfield, Seth Toney & Peyton. They helped not only us but helped the Vendors carry their stuff out to their cars. Great job.

“Thank you to Josh Scritchfield’s Mom for making the hotdog sauce. It was delicious. We sold it all.

“Then to my angels, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm so blessed to have you. And Parma Fetty was awesome. I hope I didn't forget anyone. I love you all.”

One the seventh day, the angel rested – all day with a sinus infection.

Husband Ron probably was her nurse.

During the fundraising, Susan met Amelia Shenasky Zentz, 96-year-old daughter of the late Pete and Nell Shenasky, owners of the grocery store on U.S. 19 where the Boggess building is today.

Explains Susan:

“My grandmother on my Dad’s side was a Lawrence. Amelia knew her and thinks they may be related.”

I can tell you from personal experience that Amelia, even though she is approaching the century mark, has a steel-trap mind. When I phoned her and gave her my name, she spouted out the identities of my parents – John W. Olesky, Sr. and Lena Futten Olesky – and my sister – Jackie Olesky Straight. This is one cool nonagenarian.

Susan continues:

“My grandparents lived in Douglas, West Virginia where Amelia once lived.

“My God, Amelia was beautiful!

“She wants me to bring you up to her house (on Shenasky Lane in Monongah) when you come to town.”

That would be a singular honor for me.

I know all about Amelia’s beauty. As a kid going to P.P. Shenasky Grocery for my parents, I was flabbergasted when I saw this stunning blonde. So much so that I hardly knew what kind of free candy she dumped in my hand.

And could Amelia dance! Amelia recalled: “When I was 19 I went to New York City and danced in the Cotton Club.”

Even years after she returned to Marion County, Amelia and the late Walt DeWitt did a pretty fair Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers imitation with their ballroom dancing.

Amelia, who will be 97 in January, and her late husband, Bruce Zentz, built the Dairy Kone in 1968, across the street from where we played baseball as children in the 1940s and where brothers Angelo and Alec Catania built the Sinclair service station that covered part of our baseball field next door to the Godby house and behind the garages where Thomas Street residents parked their automobiles.

The Catania siblings and their father later moved to Covina, California, where Angelo Catania, Class of 1943, celebrated his 92^nd birthday in August with his sister, Mary Catania Heywood, Class of 1945.

It was Angelo who convinced his siblings and father Mandala Catania to make the move from Thomas Street to Covina, which he discovered and fell in love with during his Army Coast Artillery training days of World War II.

The Catania family lived on Thomas Street in the third house from Church Street. The Olesky family had the first house, the Mangino family the second. The Manginos also moved, to Philadelphia, in the 1950s. 

The late Alex Catania, Class of 1944; Josephine Catania, Class of 1952; and their father, Mandala Catania, went to Covina with Angelo and Mary.

Angelo married a Monongah girl, the late Pauline Layne Catania.

Angelo’s sister, Carmella Catania Allard, Class of 1947, wound up in San Antonio because her husband, Omer, still was in the Air Force when the Catania migration took place. He retired after a pair of decades in The Wild Blue Yonder.

 

Carmella and Omer still live in the city with the Alamo, where the famous 1836 Battle of the Alamo took place between Santa Anna’s 1,500-strong Mexican Army against 182 to 257 Texians, including Davy Crockett and James Bowie. Apparently Henry Warnell was the only Texian to survive.