T-L File Photo John O. Costine was honored by the St. Clairsville Rotary Club and the city for his professional inspiration through working in the legal practice for more than 70 years.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Rotary Club and city of St. Clairsville honored long-practicing local attorney John O. Costine last week.

“We created as the St. Clairsville Rotary Club an annual celebration that we are calling J.O. Costine Professional Day,” Rotary President Melinda Thompson said.

St. Clairsville Mayor Kathryn Thalman read a proclamation honoring Costine’s “professionalism, career longevity, community contributions and service above self.”

“Mr. Costine, who is in his 90s, still goes to his office every day and helps with deeds and title work,” Thalman said afterward. “We’re blessed to include Mr. Costine in our roll call of outstanding citizens.”

With his two sons, Costine operates the Costine Law Firm in St. Clairsville. His father began the firm, which has been in practice for 100 years.

The St. Clairsville Rotarians intend the proclamation to serve as an example to high school students of perseverance and resilience in career and service.

“We feel that he’s embodied those ideals throughout his 70-plus year career,” Thompson said.

Thompson said Costine, at age 96, has been a member of the Rotary club for 66 years.

He has been practicing law for more than 70 years.

“(Costine) said he was happy to have served and proud to be part of the club and thanked us for the honor,” Thompson said. “J.O. is such a kind and generous man.”

The U.S. House of Representatives recently recognized Costine for the length of his career with a proclamation signed by U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio.

“One of the objectives of Rotary is really to encourage and foster the ideal of service in Rotarians’ personal business and community life. What we’ll do the last Tuesday of every April is celebrate John O. Costine Professional Day. What we’ll do is mentor students and encourage them in different careers of their choosing. This year, because of COVID, we couldn’t do a shadowing day at school so we invited our Interact students.”

She said Rotary Interact is a high school Rotary program to teach students about service.

“We asked them to choose professions that they were interested in to hear from, so we had Rotarians from those career paths talk about what brought them to that career? What interested them when they were young?”

She said hopefully in future years there will be more shadowing and mentoring in professions.

There were eight Interact students and 43 Rotarians participating.

The Interact students chose entrepreneurs, a financial adviser and investment banker, and an electrical engineer.