These eight people showed up at Primo’s Deli on Vern Odum Boulevard in Akron today and a BJ reunion funfest broke out.

It was nearly 2 hours of memories and laughter, organized by Mark Dawidziak, who plied his TV critic trade at the BJ before migrating to the Plain Dealer, as dozens have done before and since.

Mark got 14 RSVPs; 8 showed up, all but one  newsroom retirees.

Charles Montague waxed eloquently about Alaska, and plans to go back for about the 6^th time next year, to help with the staging of the famous Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race, which goes from Anchorage to Nome in March.

It’s more than a thousand miles of mushing the huskies, on the southern route (1,132 miles) in odd-numbered years, through Iditarod, Shageluk, Anvik, Grayling and Eagle Island, and on the northern route (1,790 miles), through Cripple and Rudy, in even-numbered years.

The fastest time took 8 days, 13 hours, 4 minutes and 19 seconds, accomplished this year by Dallas Seavey.

Chasm was enamored by the attitude of the people who live in Alaska, as I am from the visits by Paula and I to the 49^th state. There are many who came to Alaska, and loved it so much that they have stayed for the rest of their lives. 

They love the freedom and, when you want it, the solitary feeling of being left alone to do as you please. 

If Alaska drove you crazy, you left. If it didn’t, you were, as Patsy Cline sang, “Crazy over you.”

Next year Chasm plans to visit 1970s BJ State Desk reporter Cathy Strong, who is on the Massey University communications (journalism) faculty in Wellington and has a beach home not too far way.

And, later this year, South Africa. As Chasm put it: "Capetown, Mandela's cell on Ullen Island, Joburg and then into the bush to a game preserve to see lions, tigers, elephants, etc., in the wild."

He'll contact South Africa and New Zealand soccer groups in advance to expand his soccer ref resume since he's done all 50 U.S. states that way.

Chasm took a 2008 buyout from the BJ, 38 years after he began there in 1970. He has two sons and two grandsons from his two marriages, in Cleveland and Kennesaw, Georgia.

Son Joshua Montague and wife Amanda run Lilly Handmade Chocolates in Cleveland. 

Chasm volunteers twice a week at Akron City Hospital cardiac rehab lab. That's where they saved his life in 2012 when he had his heart attack. 

Montague also has had a hip replacement, which literally slowed his 50-state soccer refereeing career to a walk, and reffing only the younger players.

Cathy went 35 years with only one BJ visitor, Frances Burke Murphey. Last year retired BJ photographer Don Roese and newsroom retiree John Olesky showed up in Kiwiland for a reunion with Cathy (Don and Mary Ann were departing from Aukland Airport after a week at Cathy’s beach home and John and Paula Tucker landed to say “Hello/Bye” to Don before saying “Hello” to Cathy).

Jane Snow, the best food writer in BJ history (sorry, Polly Paffilas), is busy, busy whipping up recipes for local and national consumption and working on a cookbook to end all cookbooks. It must be, because she’s been doing it for five years and hasn’t completed it yet.

You can check out Jane’s lip-smacking concoctions at her janesnowtoday.com web site. You’ll know you found it when you see Jane’s smiling face and “See Jane Cook,” the name of her weekly Internet newsletter that is a successor to her Second Helpings column that the BJ dropped in 2006, a year after Jane left the Beacon.

Former BJ advertising vice president Mitch Allen teams with Jane to publish the newsletter, selling the ads with Mitch’s staff doing the technical stuff. Mitch owns the shopper, Mimi Vanderhaven's Fabulous Buys.

Her cookbook, “Jane Snow Cooks,” was in its fifth printing by 2010.

Jane and husband Tony Gawaguchi, owner of the Sushi Katsu restaurant at 1446 North Portage Path in the Merriman Valley, will be visiting Tony’s native Sapporo, Japan in a few weeks, to see Tony’s family. 

Jane married Tony in 2009. When he got custody of his 16-year-old son, Jane became a Mom at age 60. They live on two acres in Copley.

BJ Advertising Art retiree Mike Williams, who spends up to 75 days at a time in Ecuador with wife Jane Spiess Williams, who can speak the local languages because her first husband was from Ecuador and she spent a lot of time with him and his family, is returning to Morelia, Mexico because Jane has trouble with Ecuador’s altitude. Morelia has 684,145 people in central Mexico.

Mike and Jane, married 38 years as of March 19, have two sons, independent trucker Nathan Williams (they keep track of where he is via SmartPhone’s locator) and chemical engineer Trevor Williams. Mike retired in December 2012 after 44 years.

Mike’s sister, BJ information technology retiree Linda Williams Torson, is married to Akron-Summit County Metroparks retiree Tim Torson. Linda was with the Beacon Journal for 42 years.

Another sister, former clinical dietician Cindy Williams Chima, worked in the BJ classified phone room in the 1970s and writes fiction novels for young adults.

Russ Musarra, who teamed with former BJ artist Chuck Ayers for the “Walks Around Akron” BJ series that morphed into a book, is gathering tales and information for a book about Frances Burke Murphey, the landmark BJ female reporter (sorry, Helen Waterhouse),

Russ and Chuck also collaborated on “Greetings From Akron,” subtitled “Akron’s History in Picture Postcards,” which Fran’s 200,000 postcards probably helped put together, and “Joe’s Place: Conversations on the Cuyahoga Valley,” although Joe Jesensky was the author of that book, but Russ did the editing. 

Russ also has written crime novels based on his Cleveland reporting days.

Russ and wife Beverly live in Streetsboro after 22 years in Macedonia and 15 in Northfield Center.

Don Rosenberg, the 16-year PD classical musical critic who ticked off newspaper hierarchy because he was too honest about management’s Cleveland Orchestra muckity-mucks, put out a music magazine after leaving the PD. 

Don and his wife, Kathy Brewster, are accomplished French horn players and have performed with the Cleveland Orchestra.

Don was at the BJ 1977-1989. Kathy is an 
elementary teacher. Don taught music at Oberlin and Case Western.

Don dealt with a different type of conductor during his decades of critiquing music than Tom Moore, who is a Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad conductor during the summer and in October is in Fort Myers, Florida helping former BJ sports editor Tom Giffen run the Roy Hobbs Baseball World Series for older players.

This will be Moore’s eleventh year with Giffen.

And former BJ business writer Stu Feldstein’s brother, Steve Feldstein, helps Tom get the train from Akron to Peninsula.

Mark Dawidziak, who arranged the BJ get-together, still works at the PD (or what’s left of it) doing TV and movie stuff, or whatever else they let him throw at what seems like the Cleveland branch of the BJ. 

But I suspect he’s having more fun being Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and, lately adding a Civil War show to the Largely Literary Theater Company’s productions with wife Sara Showman.

To match his persona of the next show, he takes a photo of Twain or Dickens with him to his hair stylist so that his coiffure matches the title character.

Dawidziak’s ancestors came from Konin, in central Poland on the Warta River and 41.5 miles from Mogilno, Poland, where John Olesky’s Polish grandfather, Martin Olesky, was born before coming to America.

Konin went from, in 1557, a town with eight butchers, 14 bakers, 21 shoemakers and four fishermen to 81,258 population today. Mogilno has 81,233 residents.

Konin’s population was 30% Jews until Hitler came along and reduced it to zero, including 3,000 Jews murdered by the German SS in the forests of Kaziemesh (Kleczew), north of the city, in November 1941. Jews in the Konin labor camp in 1943 burned down their huts and tried to escape, but nearly every one was killed.

In the early 20^th century Konin’s Jewish Library was one of the finest within the Gubernya of Kalisz.

John Olesky, once Mark’s boss (in theory) as TV Editor, has recovered from the Las Vegas bug or the national canyons bug and preparing for a July 24-28 flight to Alpena, Michigan to join his friend since first grade at Bob Kasper’s Presque Isle summer home on Grand Lake.

After that, there’s six home West Virginia University football games in Mountaineer Field, 

10 days in Canada to gawk at fall foliage in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, then three months (January-March) in The Villages, Florida with 100,000 people 55 or older who party every night of the year. 

And participate in 2,400 clubs or play on 47 golf courses and ride 40,000 golf carts on 500 miles of golf cart paths and play in traffic with real cars in their carts.

After 50 countries, 2 U.S. territories, 43 states and 11 cruises, The Villages is perhaps the most unusual retirement community Olesky has witnessed. 

John and Paula were there last December for two weeks, but figure three months will be even more interesting with sports and music and volunteering sharing every 24/7 with sleep north of Orlando and Tampa.

If you missed this BJ reunion, Mark will let you know when we do it again, probably in 2015, and then you can see what good times you missed.