Peter Olinski (deceased)

Paul Olinski emailed this sad information: "Now the not so good news.  My brother, Peter, passed away in February of this year [2008].  He had retired a year ago from elementary school teaching in London.  He was vacationing in Cuba where he died of heart failure.  You never know do you?"

Keith Kueneman

Hi John,

I do not know if you remember me, but I trust that likely you do - think back about 45 years ago. I got your very interesting site from an email from Matthew Scholtz along with an old baseball pic of the Vigilantes. Keith Kueneman - remember the blonde kid that is beside John Scholtz in his pic? That's me. You may remember me from St Jerome's as well? I always find it interesting coming upon old friends, where they wound up, and what became of them. It looks like you have had a full life, have lived and travelled the world, and continued the violin to boot. Well, we kind of have similarities. I have only lived in Kitchener Waterloo, and presently in a little village 5 minutes south of Collingwood called Nottawa, but I did travel in Canada for my work. We bought a condo up in Collingwwood back in the early 90's, decided to retire here, and then after we moved up to the condo, we bought a house in Nottawa because it wasn't big enough............... It's kind of a rural setting, but we are in a small subdivision of 1/2 acre lots. We are close to Collingwood, Wasaga Beach, Barrie, Owen Sound, and Kitchener (1 hour 45 minutes). Love it here. I, like you, have been involved in colour. I was in flexible packaging involved in designs and printing. Since retirement, I have taken up water colour painting, and have started practising my violin more as well. Our little group here (7 of us) also play in Nursing homes and Retirement homes. When we hit Florida, I take my violin, and 7- 8 of us jam every week where we stay. The crowd is getting bigger. I have not found a little orchestra here tho, but would love to. At some point, I discovered all my classical music has vanished. I have done a fair amount of travelling mostly on cruises. We did a month last year from St Petersburg to Athens. Awesome. John, I really love your pictures. I, like you in photography, look for the perfect picture to paint. I do not make a living on painting tho. Maybe after I die, my paintings will really escalate in value?? Do you think??

Anyway, it would be nice to hear from you, heck, maybe even see you sometime. We are headed past your way to Pennsylvannia in July as we meet with some Florida friends for a big weekend jam session in the Alleghany Forest - should be fun. There will be guitars violin/fiddles, mandolin, and who knows what else. The jam runs from a Thursday till a Sunday - should be fun.

So, I'll let you go for now.

Keith & Mary-Pat Kueneman
34 Donald Avenue,
Nottawa, ON L0M 1P0
705-444-5859
keithk@rogers.com

Bill Klos

(Saint Jerome's English Teacher 1966 gave this update by email.)

Hi John:

Yet another surprise! To hear from you after all these years.

Yes, I'm still alive and healthy - well, relatively. Nothing that losing many, many pounds put on after retirement and cessation of smoking wouldn't cure. And yes, believe it or not I am still teaching - although of a different sort. I teach computer skills on a contract basis to seniors at one of the Senior's Centres here in Kitchener. In fact, the Centre occupies one half of the previous St. Mary's High School. The school was moved to a brand new building in Kitchener South a few years ago. The other half of the building is occupied by the Regional Catholic School Board.

I've also been involved on a number of charity Boards of Directors for the past few years and I have been involved directing plays for the Tillsonburg theatre group.

After my retirement in 1993 (I figured I had done my 'time' - it was 33 years after all), I lazed around for a year, got very bored and got myself elected to the Catholic Board for 6 years. Big mistake. I found out that I was certainly not cut out to be a politician.

As I looked over your site (great pictures!) I realized that we had more in common than SJH. I'm not sure if you remember but I too was (am) a violinist and actually played in the Kitchener Symphony for a couple of seasons way back when. Then a couple of years ago I discovered the Kitchener -Waterloo Community Orchestra, rented a violin (my own very precious instrument had been stolen years ago) and took my place in the last seat of the 2nd. violin section. (We have an outdated web site but it will give you some information). I realize that not playing for more than 30 years isn't good but I try to stay up with the others and play as many notes as I can!

Amazingly - after looking over the teacher pictures - many of us are still around. Some of us get together for breakfast on the first Wednesday of each month and if it's okay with you I'll give the ones who show up your address.

I won't bore you with too many more details. Suffice to say, again, that it is really a pleasure hearing from after all these years and if you ever decide to have a reunion I would love to hear about.

If you're ever up this way give me a call and we can meet for coffee.

Bill

[Note: When I emailed Bill, I wrote that I was shutting down the computer to catch the last few minutes of Jeopardy. His return email showed how really small the world is after all!]

P.S. Just a quick note. A bit of trivia actually. I spent a year at the University of Ottawa and Alex Trebek was a classmate. We were in a couple of plays together in 1958. And Paul Martin (ex-Prime Minister was also in my classes. In fact, we had a cast party at his dad's mansion that year.)

Brian Debly (deceased)

Hi John and Marjorie,
Greetings from Beautiful Southern Georgian Bay. Hope you are both well and enjoying the fall. Mary-Pat and I have been kept busy and time seems to be flying. I have been painting watercolour, but not as much as I want because of the great weather. Golfing, playing my violin with 6 other brothers of the Knight of Columbus at nursing and retirement homes, and enjoying Wasaga Beach have also been priorities. Keeping in touch with family and relatives has also kept us busy as well. By December 13, we will be headed for Florida, ending March with a cruise in the Western Caribbean and we should be home early April.

John, Mary-Pat and I came across a letter Brian Debly wrote back in the 80's. It is undated, and we are not sure of the when he passed away. Mary-Pat was given a copy of this letter from his mother who was our neighbour. She thought we would appreciate it since we both went to school with him. I am attaching it for you to consider posting on your St Jerome's website if you think it is appropriate since Brian was an Alumni classmate. He must have written a book as well, but as he states in this letter, that it is "written and given as a gift to my friends, will help keep my memory alive in order to share with others what it is like for me, and to share as much of myself as I possibly could with my friends". To me it is a very moving letter and I think it could be shared with his fellow classmates.

Regards,
Keith Kueneman

---

I never got around to writing before because I've been too busy dying. Now that I have accepted that my death is ultimately out of my hands, I have time to do other things. Life is so beautiful, so precious, and so temporary. I am filled at moments with wonder at the mere thought of being aware of being alive. I get angry at most people who do not seem to appreciate this enormous gift. Must it be taken away before they comprehend the power and beauty in every living moment? I suppose it is an awesome awareness to have to carry around with you and it makes life easier to take itself for granted and get caught up instead with trivia. No wonder the game "Trivial Pursuit" is so popular these days. From my vantage point it seems to me most of us have been playing it all our lives. And if that becomes a little boring we simply speed up the game. So it goes on and on until one day out of the clear blue, for no particular reason,something approximating a 10-megaton atom bomb drops out of the heavens and into your own personal lap. And perhaps that something is cancer as it is in my case. Needless to say, the entire game board as well as all the "Trivial Pursuit" questions are blown away in less than a second and one is left with nothing. Nothing other than a second and one simple naked fact, that fact being one, that you still can't believe you have heard and know that you will never again forget - not even for an instant. Fact and terror. What should have been a bad soap opera plot has suddenly become your life. "Is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? This can't be true." These and other such thoughts start echoing like a broken record over and over through the shattered remains of your once structured mind. Like an obedient and dedicated school boy you pass through prescribed questions that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross so nicely laid out as if there were some final test you needed to pass in order to die. Of course all my life, considering myself a non-conformist, I resented having anyone predict what "phases" I would pass through especially on such a personal journey as dying. But before I digress any further I want to tell you why I have written this book, written and given as a gift to my friends, will help keep my memory alive. It is this that I fear most about dying - that I will be forgotten and that life will go on as if I never existed. This thought is tremendously sad and I would like to think instead that my life has affected people I have touched and that from time to time, as the years pass, they will take the time to stop and think about me or something I may have said or done. I would like to feel that my friends would be moved by such a memory and in such a way I too would remain present on this plane. Secondly, I am recording this experience in order to share with others what it was like for me. I have always felt like a pioneer - on the leading edge. Never in my imagination did I think I would be the first one of my friends to enter on the journey. However given the task, maybe some of my thoughts and experiences can make it a little easier for those who follow. And my friends, this is a trip no one misses despite all the jogging, dieting, and meditation. Third, (of course Marion will get off on the way I have obsessively numbered the reasons) I simply wanted to share as much of myself as I possibly could with my friends. If there is one thing that this experience has taught me more than anything else, it is the importance of friendship and love. Because after that A-bomb goes off in your mind, the only thing that keeps you from total insanity is the love and caring of your friends and family. Slowly they nurture and guide you back to a place where you can begin to cope better with the harsh realities. They even taught me some very important lessons such as how to let myself be loved. I watched them pour more and more love and caring towards me even though it also opened them up to increased sense of helplessness and loss when things weren't going so well. "Not my will but thy will be done". This beautiful phrase became the answer to one of my larger dilemmas as I constantly battled between life and death.

CEDAR (BRIAN) DEBLY

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