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Brian O’Neill: Joanne and Maureen are friends to the end

Brian O’Neill: Joanne and Maureen are friends to the end

It’s a special kind of blessing to have a childhood friend who has stayed a pal for more than 50 years.

Keeping her near for eternity is another matter, and it seems appropriate to save that piece of this story for the end.

I had lunch Tuesday with Joanne Parasiliti and Maureen Senkoski at the sprawling offices of Pipitone Group on the North Side, where they both work. On the table were photocopied black-and-white snapshots from October 1963. They were eighth-graders posing on lawns with each other’s family members, stand-up-and-grin moments to be tucked in a cupboard and forgotten until stumbled upon decades later.

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In the way of long friendships, details of their first meeting are a bit of a haze. Third grade at Assumption Catholic School, they’re thinking, same class. They lived just a few blocks from each other in Bellevue, and in those days before helicopter parenting, they roamed free with platoons of other baby boomers to play kickball or make crafts on summer mornings in the old Grant School.

They can remember meeting at the school flagpole and running home with their brothers during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Earlier that month, President John F. Kennedy himself had come down Ohio River Boulevard during a mid-term election campaign swing. They walked right up to his convertible that was stopped at the red light at the end of Joanne’s street, Kendall Avenue, and saw him, big as life.

The following November, they walked home together crying. School had been let out early. President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas.

They went from playing Barbie at sleepovers to working the concession stand together at Bellevue High football games.“Heckel and Jeckel,’’ kids called them.

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After graduating with the Class of ’69, they worked across Stanwix Street from each other in Downtown during the 1970s. Joanne, still Joanne Perian then, worked at Horne’s and Maureen Babjack at Metropolitan Life at Gateway 2. They’d carpool together and lunch at Horne’s Tea Room or Palmer’s or the Colonnade, then unwind some evenings at other long-gone places in Downtown.

Those are memories that connect them to other Pittsburghers of their generation, but what connects them to each other is harder to share. When I asked Mrs. Senkoski to describe Mrs. Parasiliti, she grabbed a tissue to dab her eyes.

“She’s just the best,’’ Mrs. Senkoski said. “Just so close — like a sister. She knows me better than anybody. In bad times, she’s always there. And in good times, too.’’

“You’re making it tough for me,’’ Mrs. Parasiliti said.

They buried parents together, and in 2003 Mrs. Senkoski’s husband, Frank, died after 25 years of marriage, leaving her with three teenage children. Her best friend was there for her yet again.

By then, they were working together. About 20 years ago, when Mrs. Parasiliti was working as an administrative assistant for the graphic design studio Vance Wright Adams, she needed someone to fill in for her. She called Mrs. Senkoski, who started subbing. She was brought on full time 10 years ago.

Vance Wright Adams merged with Pipitone Group in August 2013. A company spokesman gave their current titles as ”Joanne Parasiliti, office ambassador, and Maureen Senkoski, bookkeeper.“

They’re nearing retirement age, but this pair has plans for the future that beat any girls’ night out: They’re being buried in the same mausoleum.

Yeah.

It’s just kind of working out that way. Their husbands were friends, too, and not long after Frank Senkoski was buried in a mausoleum at Christ Our Redeemer Cemetery, Joe Parasiliti took a sales job there. Mrs. Parasiliti told her husband she wanted to be buried there, too, and he bought them a couple of places.

“Probably every Catholic in the North Hills is there,’’ Mrs. Senkoski said.

“Every dead Catholic,’’ her colleague, Paul O’Rourke, corrected from down the lunch table.

Let’s not nitpick. Can any pair of friends out there top that?

Spending any time with these two is bound to make one want to rekindle friendships of one’s own. The guy I walked to school with, the kid who met me every morning at the corner of Rushmore and Broadway, Larry, is now a retired New York City cop whose kids are grown and gone.

I haven’t talked to Larry in months. I ought to call him. He still has the same phone number he had when we were teenagers, and I still know it by heart.

First Published: March 12, 2015, 4:00 a.m.

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