It was the 2015 Anderson family reunion in Mannington’s Hough Park but it also was a Prahl reunion for sisters Carolyn Marie Prahl Mikulski, Class of 1966, and Marian “Mimi” Prahl Tennant, Class of 1969.

Carolyn’s daughter, Cheri Mikulski Smith, a 1988 North Marion grad who is from Carolina but lives in Morgantown, also made it a Mikulski reunion.  

Carolyn also is the mother of Tom Mikulski, a son by her ex-husband, also named Tom Mikulski, Class of 1966, who lives in Henderson, Nevada, a Las Vegas suburb. Agnes Jean Larry DiLaura, Class of 1950, also lives in Henderson.

The 1966 grad Tom’s siblings are Fairmont State grad Stephen Mikulski, Class of 1964, a Montgomery County Public Schools teacher of engineering design married to Holly White Mikulski and living in Germantown, Maryland; David Higinbotham of Greensburg, Pennsylvania; Catherine Rogers of Fairmont; and Susan Morgan of Cupertino, California.

What about YOU? If you have a family reunion this summer, email John Olesky at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com with the details and photos in jpeg format, or if you have a Facebook page I can swipe the reunion photos from there, as I did with the Prahl sisters. 

Where are these yesterday’s heroes?

While trying to convert the 1962 Monongah High Black Diamond yearbook into the 26^th MHS online yearbook album, I came across these individual photos of the 1961 football team. Being a reporter and editor for 43 years before my 1996 retirement, naturally I wondered what happened to yesterday’s heroes.

Maybe you know. If so, email John Olesky at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com and I’ll share the information on this blog. We’re in it together, this conduit for bonding former Lions, you know.

Don Pitman lives in White Hall with his wife, Jane. They were at the 2014 Monongah High Alumni Reunion.

Bob Mick remembers sitting on the late Denver Browning’s family couch in Monongah with Gene Phillips while they waited for Denver to finish his piano practice.

Marlene Paula Mick Harrison lives in North Carolina and was in the Monongah High band and on the 1961 Homecoming court for football.

I don’t know where Donnie Blagg is, but Eugene “Buck” Blagg and wife Joann Pitman Blagg, both Class of 1951, attend the Monongah High Alumni Reunions nearly every year. Buck's sister was the late Ruth “Inkie” Lemoine Blagg McDonald of Idamay. Their parents were Vaughn Blagg and Neva Hensley Blagg.

We conducted an unsuccessful search for the whereabouts of Terry Shea on this blog last October. Larry Zickefoose, Class of 1968, asked where Terry was. No luck. Anyone ever find out where Terry is living these days? Or even if he IS living?

Ronnie Shea, Class of 1954, also from Carolina during his Monongah High days, passed away in 2013 in Deland, Florida. Ronnie attended the 60^th anniversary reunion of the Class of 1964 in 2004.

 

By the way, The Old Sugar Mill Restaurant in Deland lets you cook your own breakfast, pancakes or eggs. Delicious and fun with a griddle in the middle. Paula and I liked it so much we went there twice even though it’s two hours each way from our winter base in The Villages, Florida.

I also don’t have a clue where Eddie Vozniak is. I went to school and caddied at Fairmont Field Club with Mitch Vozniak, married to another Monongah High grad, Barbara Prezioso Vozniak.

 

Mitch was on the 1952 Monongah High state football championship team and an auto racing mechanic. The late Chester Vozniak is Mitch's brother. Chester's widow is Mildred Paknik Vozniak, Class of 1948.

Barbara’s aunt, the late Amelia Ann Yerace Prezioso (The Canned Peppers Lady), ran Prezioso Grocery at the top of Jackson Street with her husband, Roman Prezioso, Sr. Amelia and Roman, Sr. are the parents of State Sen. Roman Prezioso, Jr., Class of 1967, who lives in Fairmont with wife Deborah.

So, that’s all I know about these 1961 Monongah High football heroes. As I said, if you have better and later information, email John Olesky at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com I’ll be busy trying to finish converting the 1962 yearbook into the 26^th Monongah High Alumni online album.

Since I’ll be 83 on Nov. 5, it may be a race against time to do convert all the MHS albums through the final, 1979 Monongah High class before the consolidation into North Marion. When I finish 1962, I’ll have every yearbook from 1939 through 1965. Only 14 more to go after that. Unless the guy with the giant scythe cuts me down first.

I’m having a great time doing this. And I appreciate the weekly notes telling me how much former Lions appreciate this blog. My 43 years as a newspaper editor, reporter and sportswriter aren’t going to waste, even though I retired in 1996.

Agnes Jean Larry DiLaura in physical therapy

Jean Larry DiLaura, who went by Agnes Larry when she lived in Carolina and graduated from Monongah High in 1950, is in a Las Vegas area physical therapy facility.

Writes her daughter, Linda Cassesse, who shares a home in Henderson, Nevada with Jean:

"Mom is in a physical therapy facility to help get her stronger. One day at a time." 

Agnes was a majorette at Monongah High and is a former John Robert Powers model who ran her own business in Michigan for decades before moving West to be with her daughter.

It’s no wonder I had a secret crush on Agnes at Monongah High and left a box of chocolates on our homeroom teacher’s desk for Valentine’s Day with her name on it, but not mine.

Last year, to “recreate” that childhood moment, I sent Jean another box of chocolates to her Vegas suburb home. She loved them!

Agnes Jean has a son who is a doctor at the Cleveland Clinic and another in real estate in Nevada. She has four grandchildren.

Agnes and Gloria Larry Boehm, Class of 1959, are sisters who grew up in Carolina. Gloria lives in Pennsylvania. There’s also a sister named Connie.

Last year Linda visited Christine Sokolosky, friends with Agnes Jean since childhood who keeps in touch to this day, in Christine’s Idamay home.

To wish Agnes Jean well, go to Linda Cassesse’s Facebook page.

 

 

$1.6 million Holtz home destroyed by fire

Follansbee native Lou Holtz is looking for a new home. Fire last Sunday destroyed his 11,000 square feet $1.6 million Lake Nona home. Lake Nona a 7,000-acre community within the city limits of Orlando.

While he was born in Follansbee, Holtz grew up in East Liverpool, Ohio, where he attended high school before playing football at Kent State in Ohio.

He was a graduate assistant at Iowa, and an assistant coach at William & Mary (1961–1963), Connecticut (1964–1965), South Carolina (1966–1967) and Ohio State (1968) the year the Buckeyes won the national championship.

His coaching career was at William & Mary (1969–1971), North Carolina State  (1972–1975), Arkansas (1977–1983), Minnesota (1984–1985), Notre Dame (1986–1996) and South Carolina (1999–2004).

Holtz's 1988 Notre Dame team beat WVU in the Fiesta Bowl for the mythical national title.

Holtz is the only football coach to lead six colleges to bowl games.

He coached the New York Jets in the 1976 season.

WVU to pay $937,500 to shut up John Raese

The West Virginia Board of Governors paid $937,500 to suit-happy John Raese’s West Virginia Radio Corp. to settle the media rights lawsuit. The agreement stipulates that Raese can’t talk about the settlement for five years.

It was described as “partial reimbursement for attorney fees.” Since I was involved in a class action lawsuit I can tell you that Raese doesn’t profit from this settlement, not after the avalanche of lawsuits he filed. The lawyers do, though.

In the healthcare lawsuit by 50 Akron Beacon Journal retirees, the newspaper agreed to restore retirement-day healthcare coverage and to pay the retirees’ attorney fees, which came within $200,000 of the Raese/BOG settlement. If the newspaper paid its outside attorneys as much as the retirees’ attorneys charged, that would have come to $3.5 million in legal fees. These guys aren’t cheap.

Raese filed suit in June 2013 alleging former athletic director Oliver Luck conspired with several key figures, including BOG chairman and West Virginia Media investor Drew Payne, to rig the media rights bidding in favor of IMG College. IMG’s bid was significantly higher than what Raese had been paying WVU for decades for the sports coverage rights.

IMG, in the second round of bidding, agreed to pay WVU $86.5 million over 12 years for third-tier rights to football and basketball games not covered by the Big 12's TV deals, all radio broadcasts, coaches shows, website content and campus signage.

Oliver Luck, the main source of Raese’s ire, left WVU for a major role in the NCAA.

Andrea Justice Domico and  Fairmont West grad Dave Domico are celebrating their 1^st wedding anniversary today, June 27, in their Monongah home. Their daughter is Averyonna Domico, 3.

Dave Domico wrote:

“1 year ago I married the woman of my dreams. I waited 40 years to find my Soulmate. I love you Andrea and I am looking forward to spending the rest of my LIFE with you.”

Andrea’s father, Aaron Justice, Class of 1972, lives on Walnut Street with the wife he found in Rivesville in the home his father purchased eons ago. Walnut Street is famous for being the birthplace of John Olesky, Jr. in his grandparents’ house.

Aaron's sisters, Alceste and Antheai Justice Turner, 1982 North Marion grad, also live in Monongah.

Apparently the Justice family never got beyond "A" in the baby-names book. I also found Ann Justice and Alissa Justice in Facebook photos but I don't know if these are alternate names for the other A. Justice family members.

Andrea is a Certified Nurses Aide at St. Barbara's Nursing Home, which the now-extinct Sts. Peter and Paul nuns and the deceased Father Everett Briggs founded in 1961 to help miners and their families. St. Barbara is the patron saint of miners. Everyone knows that anyone who works inside the coal mines needs all the heavenly help they can get.

Coal’s calamitous collapse

There’s no pussyfooting around it: Coal mining is in trouble.

Regulations have forced businesses to spend billion trying to clean the coal before it hits the air.

China, which burns half the world’s coal, is switching rapidly to natural gas and wind power.

European coal consumption is decreasing steadily.

Natural gas in North America has gotten much cheaper.

Clean-coal technology, once seen as the panacea to save the industry, raises the cost of coal-powered electricity generation by up to 80% and cuts efficiency by 30%.

The market capitalization of America’s four largest coal companies is $1.2 billion, an astounding and alarming freefall from $22 billion in 2010. That's only 5 years ago.

Coal mining employment went from 784,621 in the 1920s to 80,209 today. That’s almost a 90% drop. Few industries can survive such a staggering collapse.

And the annual production per miner is dropping steadily after it peaked in 2000. 

No wonder West Virginia has the highest unemployment rate in the nation. With the corn boom for gasoline and everything else, Nebraska is No. 1 on the good end of the unemployment list.

The glimmer of hope comes from poor countries, which prefer growth over greenery, particularly India.

Wyoming, with a more desirable type of coal, leapfrogged West Virginia as the No. 1 coal-producing state even though West Virginia has 20,281 coal miners to 6,673 in Wyoming.

You can real the entire article in The Economist by clicking on http://www.economist.com/news/business/21653622-coals-woes-are-spreading-it-still-has-its-fans-black-moods