You always knew where Bob Gornall stood — he stood with you
MIKE BURKE Allegany Radio Corporation Sports
The late Bob Gornall, he of the Cumberland, Maryland West Side, became a Mountaineer for life the moment he stepped on campus as a student at West Virginia University in the fall of 1961.
Bob is best known in the Cumberland area as the longtime owner and operator of Western Maryland Distributing, which he purchased in 1978 after launching his career as an accomplished journalist for United Press International (more on that at another time), a businessman, then marketing director for the Queen City Brewery before being hired by the Miller Brewing Company.
Bob built a career and created and lived a life that most of us could only dream of. He earned every bit of it and worked his tail off every step of the way. He refused to take no for an answer. He was funny; he was grumpy. He was charming; he could be, uh … blunt. There were times when you wanted to strangle him, but in the end you usually wanted to hug him.
He didn’t want people to know it, but he was kind to a fault. He had such a soft spot in his heart for those in need and for the elderly; and he cared for them and made sure they had plenty of what they needed.
Bob was the perfect friend in that he told you the truth. He told you what you needed to hear, not just what you wanted to hear. Yet he was always full of encouragement.
He liked to answer to any number of nicknames, including Beer Baron Bob. However, my favorite, and I believe his, was R.F., the initials for the slang political term for doer of dirty tricks, which was brought to light during the Watergate coverage. Bob Gornall was a force in a lot of people’s lives, and he could also be a disturbance in the force. He once told me, “I never like to be a complainer, but I am, so I will;” then proceeded to tell me of all of our sports department’s shortcomings when it came to our NASCAR coverage when I was the sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News.
Oh, Bob loved him some NASCAR. He loved stock-car racing and once owned his own team. In fact, he was a complete sportsman. Competitors of all kinds fascinated Bob, and he liked to get to know them and mingle with them to find what made them tick.
He once tangled with Boog Powell over the contents of an empty Miller Lite can during a charity event Bob had brought the former big-league slugger to speak at, and he shared friendships with many of the Miller Lite All-Stars during the heyday of those delightfully famous beer commercials. He was also friends with some of the most famous drivers in NASCAR, including the Wallace family, who were amongst the Gornalls’ dearest friends.
But his true sports devotion was to West Virginia University — once a Mountaineer, always a Mountaineer. Bob loved West Virginia. He was a significant booster and he lived and died with the Mountaineers at every turn.
I remember a conversation I had with R.F. at a time when Rich Rodriguez had recently left WVU to become the head football coach at Michigan and as John Beilein was in the process of leaving Morgantown for Ann Arbor to become the Wolverines’ basketball coach.
Bob was beside himself and he was angry. So, naturally, he called me to complain, as though I had had anything to do with Beilein’s decision. Bob simply could not understand how anybody who has ever been involved in any way with WVU could not see all of the wonderful things about it and love it with every fiber of being as he felt about it and loved it.
“What do these (misguided souls) see that’s so great about Ann Arbor?” he wondered.
“It’s a pretty nice place, Bob,” I offered. To which I was informed of how ill-informed I was about most matters of life and that I was of no help at all and he had no idea why he was wasting his time talking to me.
The truth is, Bob had really grown quite fond of Beilein, as nearly everybody at WVU had, and he rightly believed that Beilein was a wonderful coach. And as a Mountaineer fan, his feelings were hurt more than anything, and he was ticked because his school was losing such a great coach.
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” Bob said. “I don’t know who (WVU) will hire to replace him, but it better not be that criminal Huggins, because if it is, they’ll never see another penny from me.”
“That’s (B.S.),” I said.
“It is like hell,” he said. “I’ll never go again. I’ll never watch again and I’ll never give them a penny. He’s a crook and his players don’t graduate.”
I informed Bob that Bob Huggins was only one of the very best basketball coaches in the world, and that he not only was not a crook, but was a WVU graduate as well as an Academic All-American when he played basketball for the Mountaineers.
“If they hire Huggins,” I told him, “within two months of the first season, you’ll be on your knees kissing his (ring). You’ll absolutely love Huggins. In fact, you will worship Bob Huggins because West Virginia will win and West Virginia will win big.”
“You obviously forgot who you’re talking to here, Junior (I was R.F. Jr. — and proud of it).”
Huggins, of course, was the selection to be the next WVU basketball coach, and after coaching the Mountaineers to 26-11 and 23-12 seasons his first two years, he guided them to a 31-7 record, the Big East title and a berth in the Final Four his third season.
My assignment one March 2010 afternoon was to call West Virginia fans in the area and interview them for their feelings on the Mountaineer Mania that had gripped the air. Naturally, the name of Bob Gornall was at the top of my call list.
“Absolutely fan(bleeping)tastic,” Mr. Gornall announced to me for his first quote for the story. “Old Huggy’s got ’em going. Never thought I’d live to see it, but by God, we have a shot to win this thing. Hugs will have ’em ready.”
“Huggy?” I asked. “Hugs? What happened to ‘crook’ and ‘criminal’ and academic fraud?”
To the surprise of no one, most certainly not me, there was no recollection whatsoever on Mr. Gornall’s part of any of the aforementioned conversation we had shared three years prior. In fact, Mr. Gornall told me I should be ashamed of myself for making up such lies about “Hugs.”
Yes, once a Mountaineer, always a Mountaineer. And once Bob Gornall found his way to your heart, he was always in your heart. No matter how hard he tried sometimes to make you wish he would escape it.
Mike Burke writes about sports for Allegany Radio and Pikewood Digital. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s County Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984. He was the sports editor of the Times-News for nearly 30 years. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter @MikeBurkeMDT
