With America reeling from the Great
Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Works Progress
Administration by executive order in 1935 as part of his extensive New Deal.
With unemployment at a staggering
20%, the WPA provided jobs and income for more than 3.3 million Americans by
1938. They built or repaired roads and schools, built dams and even restored
cemeteries.
By the time WPA was shut down in
1944, unemployment had dropped to 2%.
Federal Project Number One under the
WPA hired artists, musicians, actors and writers who painted motivational
murals on public buildings, sculpted monuments and performed music. This led to
the creation of the National Foundation for the Arts.
The WPA also gave birth to the
National Youth Administration, which from 1935 to 1943 provided 4.5 million
young people between the ages of 16 and 25 with jobs, vocational training or a
better education.
That’s where Mary Maxine Moosey,
Class of 1934, comes into the picture. The government paid Mary $40 a month to
find out what happened to Monongah High graduates.
Mary put together the “Who’s Who of
Monongah High 1918-1935.” Her notes indicate that she planned to add
information about MHS graduates through 1940, but 1935 is as far as she got
with her NYA project.
She found out, for example, that 38
female and 9 male alumni became schoolteachers.
And that four alumni became doctors
and one became a dentist. 17 became nurses.
And that Paul Kundratik, Class of
1933, was an adult education advisor for the National Youth Administration,
another Monongah High grad paid by the government for NYA projects.
Mary Maxine Moosey did more than put
together the “Who’s Who of Monongah High 1918-1935” project.
Elaine Hewitt Monell, Mary’s neighbor
when they were growing up in Monongah, filled me in on the details.
After beginning at Fairmont State
Teachers College, Mary became Dr. Mary Moosey, MD. Her brothers, Louis and
George, also became doctors.
I learned from Mary’s project that George, Class
of 1923, became a surgeon after working his way through medical schools in
Baltimore and Richmond, Virginia and married teacher Frances Stavely. They
moved to Tacoma, Washington.
And that Louis, Class of 1929, got his MD from the
University of Richmond, then interned at Detroit Children’s Hospital and
married.
Their cousin, Bill Lawson, also
became a doctor in San Antonio, Texas.
Bill’s mother, Sadie, and Mary’s
mother were sisters. Sadie Moosey Lawson, Class of 1924, married William D.
Lawson, a mechanic and proprietor of Sadabilt Lunchroom. Their only child is
William “Bill” Lawson, Jr., legendary during his Monongah High days for his skills with the drums.
Mrs. Moosey ran a clothing store.
After fire destroyed the store, she sold clothes by going from house to house.
Sadly, Mary and a friend were killed in
an auto/truck collision not long after she became a doctor.
Her sisters were Catherine Moosey
Gleva, Class of 1940, who moved to Tacoma, Washington; and Elizabeth Moosey
Fleming, Class of 1943, who resided in Mullins, South Carolina.
Bill Meredith, Class of 1957,
remembers going to school with John Lynn Moosey, who moved to Ohio.
Katharine Meredith Lafollette, Class of 1934, is Bill
Meredith’s aunt. Katharine married Lawrence Lafollette and moved to Canton,
Ohio. They had three children.
Roger Lawson, Class of 1961, Dr. Bill
Lawson’s brother, lives in Michigan.
Jennifer Bradley Lawson is Class of
1965.
Mary Moosey’s work revealed that the guy
who ran the Monongah theater was Hereford Currey, Class of 1925, brother of Ava
Currey Cogar, who lived on Cottage Avenue and was the best friend of my mother,
Lena Futten Olesky, who lived across U.S. 19 on Church Street.
Ava was the
laywoman assistant when St. Stanislaus Catholic School opened in Monongah in
1924. Later, the name was changed to Sts. Peter and Paul School since Our Lady
of Pompeii, the Italian church, and St. Stanislaus, the Polish church, provided
nearly all the children for the Catholic school on Church Street.
Also in the Class of 1925 was Bryan
Currey, who was in the family’s Currey Motor Company business; Anne McKain, who
taught at Thoburn School and was the organist at St. Stanislaus Church who
asked me to stand at the far back of the balcony choir so that I wouldn’t throw
everyone else off-key; and Helen Soyer Nagel, mother of Jeannie Nagel
Viglianco, Class of 1949, Ted Nagel, Class of 1954, and Marty Nagel, Class of
1952.
Adam Michna provided a photo of a NYA
marker at Holy Spirit Cemetery between the Polish and Italian sections. We knew
it as Mount Calvary Cemetery when I was growing up in Monongah.
But the NYA did
work on the cemetery, which has a lot of the 1907 Monongah mines explosions
victims in it among the 362 who died that day.
Monongah High’s first graduation, the
Class of 1918, included Dr. Stanley Skarr, who after his George Washington
Medical School education opened a practice in Davis, which is near the entrance
to Blackwater Falls State Park. He married Blanche Mazir. They had a child,
Dolores Jean.
Dr. Skarr’s 1918 classmates were
Sylvia May Swisher, who became a schoolteacher living with her parents Charles
Swisher and Alice Merrill Swisher in Stoney Lonesome before passing away in
1941 in Monongah; Fay Holbert, who became an accountant and married
stenographer Martha Stoop; and Robert Jones, who became an insurance adjuster
married to schoolteacher Veda Satterfield.
From the
Class of 1919, Kathleen Shaver married traveling salesman Berry Wilson and
moved to Huntington after teaching in Thoburn School for four years; Victor Higgs, Sr. married Edith Higgs of
Davis Ridge and had a son, Victory Higgs, Jr.; Mattie Martin Clelland married
John Clelland and moved to Catawba; Myra Martin Stewart married Glenn Stewart
and moved to Beckley; Genevieve Fluharty Parrish moved to National City,
California; David Anderson moved to Fairmont; and Raymond Jones moved to Denver.
In the Class of 1920 was Harry Jerome
Hobbs, who became a science and chemistry teacher at Monongah High and
president of the Natural History Society. He married Clarice R. Oakes in 1926.
Harry passed away in 1960, Clarice in 1994. She taught in Monongah for nine
years.
Also in the Class of 1920 was machinist
Ralph Fox, who married Cora Coe three years later. They had four children,
including Monongah High star fullback Robert Fox, and Doris, Shirley and
Loretta Fox.
Loretta June Fox McCombs was Harless McCombs’ widow when she
passed away in 2017. Loretta’s siblings are Lois Fox Simmons, widow of Lewis “Fuzzy” Simmons;
Doris Fox Crislip, Mary Jane Fox Hickman, Class of 1960, and Shirley Fox
Wilson.
In
the Class of 1921 was Madge Fleming, who married George Hartrick, later a West Monongah
High principal before becoming a Cleveland WTAM radio announcer, a program
director for Beckley WJLS radio station in 1947 and doing Boston Red Sox and
Boston Braves baseball play-by-play for Boston WCOP. The Marlboro, Massachusetts native also had
been a principal at Asheville High School in Asheville, North Carolina.
In the Class of 1922, when Homer
Toothman was principal, was Greta Martin Mike, who married barber Jimmy Mike.
Greta started the Monongah High Alumni Reunion, which had its 95th
Reunion in 2018 as the longest continuously running high school reunion in West
Virginia. Before marriage, she lived with her aunt and taught in Worthington,
Chiefton and Bethlehem.
Among the other graduates is Adrian
Currey McDaniel, Class of 1923, who married legendary Monongah Streetcar
Station Master Ted McDaniel. Their children are Jim McDaniel, Class of 1960, who
married Mary Bolin McDaniel, who grew up in Monongah; Mary Jane McDaniel
Pritchard; Joann McDaniel Huff,
Class of 1949; and
Donald McDaniel. Their grandmother was Martha Maude Fleming Currey.
Mary
Jane and Charles Pritchard’s daughters are Jane “Nene” Pritchard Moore, Class
of 1975, who married Henry Moore; Beth Pritchard Brooks, Class of 1978, who
married Rick Brooks; and Jonna Pritchard Barnett, 1980 North Marion grad after
going to Monongah High for three years, who married Shinnston High grad Brad
Barnett.
Donald’s
daughter is Barbara, who lives in Germany. Jim McDonald learned about her
existence and met her decades after World War II ended and Donald had passed
away.
Joann’s
children are Robert, Valerie and Melissa.
In
the Class of 1923 was Harry Leeper, who became a historian (and author of
“History of Monongah and Monongah School”) and founding member of the National
Thespian Society, established in 1929 by Alpha Psi Omega at Fairmont State
Normal School (later, Fairmont State College).
Harry designed the Thespian
Society’s insignia and was the first editor of its publication, “The High
School Thespian.” Harry, Fairmont East
drama teacher Paul Opp and Ernest Bavely of Monongah, Opp’s secretary, were the
primary forces behind forming the National Thespian Society at Fairmont West
and Fairmont East.
Natrona County High School in Casper, Wyoming was Troupe 1,
West was Troupe 2 and East was Troupe 3 nationally. Fairmont was the Thespian
Society’s first national headquarters.
In the
Class of 1926 was Marguerite Tropea, the daughter of grocery store owners Tony
and Rose Loss Tropea who married Simon
Matthews, and was the mother of Simon Paul Matthews, Jr., Class of 1956, Rose
Matthews Ilich and Muggy Matthews Stottlemire; and Fred Bice, who worked on the Monongah
dam as part of a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project.
In the Class of 1927 was George
Crislip, who worked in a Monongah mine but died in an automobile accident
before Mary Moosey’s 1935 project was published.
In the Class of 1928 was Geneva Brumage,
who later became a legendary and super-nice Monongah High typing and shorthand
teacher. It was Miss Brumage who gave me a foundation in typing that I relied
on throughout my 43-year newspaper career.
In the Class of 1929 was Weadon Koon,
who operated his farm on Swisher Hill. Bob Kasper, Class of 1950, remembers
working for Weadon when Bob was about 12 years old for $1 a day for working in
and around the barn with the unexpected bonus of observing a bull servicing a
cow. Weadon, as Bob remembers it, had 5 or 6 children.
It was not Weadon but another Coon,
with a “C,” who got caught up in the reins of a runaway horse and was yanked
off his buggy and dragged to death near the Union Hall in Monongah. I recall
that scene vividly as a child.
Bob Kasper’s sister, Helen Kasper,
was in the Class of 1933. She married and moved to Dearborn, Michigan, which is
why Bob wound up with Ford Motor, eventually being on the carmaker’s side of
the table in negotiations with the United Automobile Workers union.
Helen and
Bob’s sister is Evelyn Kasper Boggess, Class of 1953, who lives in her childhood home with
husband Okey Boggess, a retired coal miner, not far from St. Barbara’s Memorial
Nursing Home.
In the Class of 1930 was Maurine
Hines, who became a teacher and married Casper Boone, a fire boss at the Omar
mine in Omar, West Virginia.
In the Class of 1931 was Regina D’Ariano,
who did adult teaching in Monongah High and lived with her brother, Roy
D’Ariano, an Italian shoemaker who published his song, “Lover, Come Back to
Me.”
Regina passed away in 1993 and is buried in Monongah’s Mount Calvary
Cemetery. So is Roy, who had his 100th birthday before his 1999
demise.
Regina and Roy D'Ariano came to America in
1912. Their books included "La Piccola Cantatrice," "David and
Ruth," "The Princess Under Seven Veils" and “I’ll Strike It Rich,” a novel about an Italian immigrant who
comes to America that was published in 1963 by Exposition Press.
Regina and
Roy’s Italian-American ballards, poems, lyrics and melodies are available on
Amazon.com .
Also in the Class of 1931 was a
physician, Dr. Earl Ray Kinney, who married Mildred June Snider Kinney. He was
a son of Charles Luther Kinney and Christie Stiles Kinney.
Dr. Kinney’s
siblings were Grace Kinney Mead and Blanche Kinney, both deceased. He passed
away in 1959 at the age of 43. He is buried in Fairmont’s Woodlawn Cemetery.
Another 1931 graduate was Virginia
Tropea, who married Pete Neri and taught grade school in Monongah.
In the Class of 1932 was Dorothy
Rogers, who married Monongah banker Fay Wilson, Class of 1922. Their children
were John William “Bill” Wilson and Betty Lynn, who married Monongah High
football coach Jim Feltz, at the helm for Monongah High state titles in 1952
and 1955 before Betty and Jim’s son, Jay Feltz, quarterbacked the 1973 Lions to
another state championship.
Dorothy passed away in 2007, Fay in
1980. Her parents were Thomas and
Ollie Boone Rogers.
Thomas and Ollie's other children were Rita Slayton, Juanita Esketh, Ann Eicher, Betty Leach and sons Dodd. W.F., McCue,
Harry, Brentford and Reidy Rogers.
Also in the Class of 1932 was Pauline
Calabrase Hewitt, who married Charles E. Hewitt.
Their children are Elaine
Hewitt Monell, Class of 1949, Class of 1945 grad Raymond “Soak” Monell’s widow; Charles E. Hewitt, Jr.; and
Gloria Hewitt Kielbaso, who married James Kielbaso.
Pauline’s siblings are
Minnie Oliverio, Josephine Swiger, Navy veteran and WVU graduate Nick Calabrase
(who married Clarince Maunz Calabrase before passing away April 21, 2018 in
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina) and another brother and two other sisters who
predeceased her.
Pauline was cafeteria manager at Stivers High School in Dayton
for almost three decades.
Also in the Class of 1932 was Helen
Olesky, sister of my father, John W. Olesky, Sr. and Frances Olesky Fazio, who
married Renzy Fazio and had the Fazio Grocery on Jackson Street. Helen married
Steve Kerekes, a Carolina coal miner.
In the Class
of 1933 was George Pigott, who taught combat pilots how to fly in World War II,
and Josephine Agnes Michna, who became Sister Rose and taught at Sts. Peter and
Paul School.
In the Class
of 1934 with Mary Maxine Moosey, who put together the “Who’s Who in Monongah
High 1918-1935,” was Mary Lee, who married a Bennett and was Monongah News
correspondent for the Fairmont Times, which I did during my Monongah High and
WVU student days as a precursor to my 43-year newspaper career.
Also in the Class of 1934 was Katherine
Meredith LaFollette, whose parents were Howard and Grace Grove Meredith. Her
three children were Tom, Bob and Larry LaFollette. Tom and Larry are deceased.
Bob and his wife, Eileen, live near Lewisville, in Monroe County, Ohio.
Katherine’s
siblings, all deceased, were James Meredith, Gertrude Meredith Mason, Inza
Meredith Thomas, Josephine Meredith Scott and Charles Meredith, who married
Pauline Jane Meredith (her maiden name; they were distant cousins).
Charles and
Pauline’s seven children are Bill Meredith, Class of 1957, whose birth name is Charles
William Meredith and who is married to Clarksburg Washington Irving graduate
Roleta Meredith; Pat Meredith Wills, Class of 1950, married to former Fairmont
West athlete Don Wills; and, all deceased, Jack Meredith, Class of 1943; Howard
Joe Meredith, Class of 1945; Marion Jean Meredith Riddle, Class of 1945;
Marjorie Delores Meredith Holt, Class of 1947; and Bonnie Meredith.
In the Class
of 1935 was Nick Eates, Ruth Grimes Domico and Christine Tropea Jacobin.
Nick worked
at Consol coal mines and Four States mine as fire boss and mine foreman. He was
an instructor for Consol’s mine rescue team. After the mines closed, he worked
and retired from the U.S. Postal Service as custodian in Fairmont. He died in
the late 90s.
Nick’s
siblings are Mike Eates, Class of 1948; Joe Eates, Class of 1945, married to Ann DeMary Eates,
Class of 1945; Tony Eates, Class of 1950, married to Lucy Cann Eates; Dominick
Eates, Class of 1946, who married Mary Larry Eates; Mary Eates and Angie Eates.
Ruth
Grimes married Julius “GeeGee” Domico. They lived next door to the Fazio
Grocery on Jackson Street.
Ruth and GeeGee were best friends of my parents,
John W. Olesky, Sr. and Lena Futten Olesky. Because both couples were married
in January, when the March of Dimes dance was held every January at the Union
Hall in Monongah to honor polio victim President Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
they celebrated their wedding anniversaries together year after year at the UMW Hall near
Pepsi’s service station at the foot of the hill to Stoney Lonesome.
Christine
married Leo Jacobin, Class of 1933. Their son, also named Leo Jacobin, is a
1959 Monongah High graduate. Christine’s sister, Marguerite Tropea, was a 1926
graduate.
Christine and Leo made robes and slippers that they donated to
Fairmont General Hospital patients for more than 20 years.
Christine
and Marguerite’s other siblings were Vincent Tropea; Virginia Tropea Neri
and Helen Tropea Bieglecki.
St. Anthony, Monongah’s first Catholic church, began
in 1893 in a building that later housed the Tropea Grocery on Camden Avenue.
Before that, Irish-Catholics assembled at the home of Jim McKain on Camden
Avenue.
St. Stanislaus Church was erected in 1904. After fire destroyed St.
Stanislaus’ wooden structure, the brick St. Stanislaus Kostka Church was constructed
adjacent to land that eventually housed St. Peter and Paul Catholic School
higher up the hill.
