TENNESSEE JOE DeMARY HAS CANCER. DeMARY FAMILY IN MONONGAH AND MONONGAH HIGH HISTORY ... MANY OF THEM NAMED JOE.

 

One of many Monongah Joe DeMarys has cancer

 

Monongah native Joe DeMary has cancer, his sister, Joanne DeMary, reports.

 

This Joe DeMary – and there are MANY DeMarys in Monongah and Monongah High history – lives in Tennessee.

 

Joanne lives in Ooltewah, Tennessee, attended Monongah High and North Marion High after MHS closed and merged into North Marion with other Marion County high schools. And was in Red Bank school in Tennessee in 1980-82 after leaving Marion County.

 

Joanne is retired from the Army.

 

The DeMary family has been in Monongah and attend Monongah High for decades.

 

Another Joe DeMary spent much of his life in Monongah and was a retired Loveridge Mine coal miner before he passed away in Rivesville, where there’s a DeMary’s Market on you way into that town, in 2007.

Coal miner Joe’s father, also Joe DeMary, was a member of the Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Monongah, which replaced the Polish St. Stanislaus Church and Italian Our Lady of Pompeii Church.

 

Son Joe’s others siblings, besides Joanne Mary DeMary who spent Army time as a Sgt. 1st Class at Fort Meade, Maryland, are Kimberly Jo DeMary Clowers of Rossville, Georgia, and Julie Ann DeMary of Soddy, Tennessee.

Son Joe’s stepfather, Harold Lee Hustead, passed away in Red Bank years ago. Harold once taught industrial arts at DuPont High School in West Virginia and was with the Red Bank fire department for decades.

Harold’s children are Joanne DeMary, Joseph DeMary (Beverly) and Julie DeMary Cynthia Hustead Duchane; sister, Karen Sue McNeer (Marshall); brothers, Mark Hustead (Sue Ann) and Tom Hustead (Becky); five grandchildren; three great-grandchildren.

Papa Joe’s brother, Frank DeMary Jr., married Tina “Peaches” Virginia Aldridge DeMary, who passed away in 2019.

 

In the Class of 1950 with me was the late Anthony “Plumber” DeMary, Jr., whose Monongah High brother was, you guessed it, Joe DeMary.

 

Tony DeMary lives in Fairmont. He was in the facietiously named Gang That Terrorized Marion County that I ran around with during my teen and Monongah High years.

 

Tony’s sister, Ann DeMary Eates, widow of Joe Eates and part of a legendary Monongah Citizens of the Year couple, is the godmother of my son, John Larry Olesky of Tallmadge, Ohio. Ann’s husband is my son’s godfather.

 

I visit Ann regularly when I get to Monongah. She lives on Bridge Street, at the bottom of the hill that leads outside the corporation limits to Bridge Street Extension, where Ramona Fullen Michalski, widow of Frank Michalski, lives.

 

Ramona’s uncle was the late Lionel Nichols, who owned and operated Nichols’ Grocery in Monongah for decades.