CATCHING UP WITH BOB COTTRILL, CLASS OF 1951

 

Bob Cottrill, Class of 1951, made a most welcome Christmastime phone call to me and we caught up on a lot of things about other Monongah High graduates.

Bob exchanges phone calls with Arlene Marteney Decker Edgell, Frances Wimer Miller and Duane Harbert, all in Bob’s Class of 1951. Arlene lives in Fairmont, Frances in Tulsa with husband Ken Miller and Duane is a widower living in Marlton, New Jersey. 

I got together with Arlene and husband Okey Edgell, Class of 1944, at Monongah High reunions and the gathering of Lions I arranged in 2014 at the Three Ways Inn in Fairmont in the recent decade. 

Duane and I communicate with each other regularly, too. Arlene has another birthday coming up on January 18. 

Duane’s mother, Goldie, taught at Worthington Grade School. Duane’s father, Frank Harbert, was principal of Thoburn Elementary in Monongah. Duane’s brother, John Harbert, Class of 1955, and his wife, Karen Colvin Harbert, also class of 1955, are deceased.

Bob also had a reunion a few years back with Delores Vingle, part of the musical Vingle family at Monongah High, “a great singer” who also lives in Florida.

Arlene, Bob said, “is having a hard time with her health problems.”

Bob was the toughest player on the Lions’ football team, knocking out more than one tackler who tried to stop him. Bob didn’t evade tacklers. He mowed them down.

Bob fondly remembers how “Big Frank Michalski,” as Bob calls him, and Bob would pair up on defense. Bob said he told Frank, who was my protector against playground bullies at Sts. Peter and Paul School who made fun of my cleft palate speech defense (one warning from Frank and they never did it again):

“You do the body blocks (to take our offensive linemen) and I’ll do the rest.” Big Frank did. Bob did. Big Frank’s widow is Ramona Fullen Michalski, Class of 1949, still living on the hill of Bridge Street Extension just outside the Monongah town limits.

Bob said he was reminiscing with his son, Randy, who lives in Tampa “three hours from us” in Melbourne, Florida, about his Monongah High football days, which came before Monongah High won 5 state titles in 1952, 1955, 1968, 1969 and 1973.

Bob’s daughter, Rhonda, lives 9 miles from Bob and his second wife, Thelma. Bob's first wife was Barbara Henderson, whose best friend was Thelma, who still visits family and friends in North Carolina where she was living when she took trips to see Barbara and Bob.

BBob noBoBob no longer drives because of macular degeneration and no longer jitterbugs after he fell doing that in 2019 when he tried to slide and his “wrong kind of shoes” didn’t go along with his move. Lions opponents’ defenses couldn’t take him down, but his cracked thigh bone did. “Other than my walking,” Bob said, “everyone is spot on” health-wise.

“My traveling days are over,” Bob said, “and I’m not driving any more.”

Bob worked with his father in the coal mines while attending Monongah High. He also drove a Marion County school bus to help pay for his Fairmont State education and helped Steven “Bucky” Satterfield, get a job as a Marion County school bus driver, too. 

Bob attended college on the GI Bill after he left the Navy in 1956. Bob graduated from Fairmont State in three years, began a teaching career in biology and general science and coaching at Ohio's Wapakoneta High School – astronaut Neil Armstrong’s hometown.

Just as I credit math/algebra/geometry teacher Mary Turkovich for instilling discipline in me, Bob credits Kathleen Snoderly, a social studies teacher at Monongah High, for instilling in him the importance of discipline if you want to be a good teacher. 

Bob was an education administrator in Northfield School District in Summit County, Ohio, about 15 miles from where I live in Tallmadge. He became an expert on school financing and integration.