The body of a Monroeville man who went missing while kayaking in Tennessee has been recovered, authorities said.
News station WTVF reported that the body of Don Slusser, 73, of Monroeville, was discovered in Percy Priest Lake, just east of Nashville. Slusser and his wife were camping at the Seven Points Campground, on the lake’s northern shore and had been kayaking, according to WTVF.
First responders were called around 8:30 p.m. Thursday night when Slusser could not be located as a sizable storm system moved through the region.
“It’s devastating news,” said Mark Courtney, a good friend who often ran with Slusser. “(Slusser) travels a lot, and does a lot of kayaking, but he’s not a white water guy or anything like that.”
Slusser is part of a small group of runners that had never missed the marathon or the annual Pittsburgh Great Race.
“He started running it in 1977,” Courtney said. “He’s run more than 204,000 miles, and he’s one of the members of our 70,000 Mile Club.”
Courtney once went on a trip to Virginia with Slusser, and witnessed his dedication to fitness firsthand.
“All we did was exercise the whole time,” Courtney said. “And he’d be calculating how many miles we biked, how many we ran, and then he’d try to figure out our calorie count and finally he told me he was pretty sure we’d burned about 80 more calories than we consumed during the trip.”
In recent years, Slusser’s pace had slowed a bit, owing to age and two knee replacement surgeries, Courtney said.
“The last few, he was in pretty rough shape. A lot of people would roll their eyes or shake their heads when they saw him coming,” he said. “But he just kept his head up and kept going.”