At the heart of a remarkable businessman lived the passion of a remarkable journalist
“Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.”
— Satchel Page
MIKE BURKE Allegany Radio Corporation Sports
Bob Gornall, who died on October 30, was a widely known and respected businessman in the Cumberland area for over 50 years.
From 1968 to 1970, Gornall was the station manager of radio station WUOK, managing on-air and off-air operations, mainly the sales force, of the 5,000-watt station. In 1970, he founded the Allegany County Shopper and through an advertising promotion he masterminded in conjunction with the Queen City Brewing Company, he became marketing director of the local brewery, selling the Shopper in 1973.
When Queen City closed its doors, Gornall became the area manager of the Miller Brewing Company, which invariably led to his purchase of Western Maryland Distributing Company, Cumberland, in 1978, for which he was the CEO until passing it along to his son Murray upon his retirement in 2014.
When I think of Bob Gornall, I think of many things — reggae music, which he loved, NASCAR, which he supported, bought into and followed religiously, charities, which he supported and believed in, and entrepreneurship, having not only started his own business, but assisting quite a few others in starting businesses of their own.
I respected Bob Gornall a great deal, and after a bumpy, often times caustic, beginning to our friendship, I quickly grew to love and admire him even more.
We had different interests — I, for instance, never carried the love for reggae that Bob did, and he loved NASCAR and could never figure out why I didn’t. In fact, Bob once even made a concerted effort to convert me from being a baseball fan to a NASCAR fan in 1992 that would end in disaster for both of us, as I literally fell asleep during The Goodwrench 500 at Rockingham (N.C.) Speedway where Bob had taken me as his guest.
Upon being awoken from my mid-afternoon slumber in the dense North Carolina heat that early March day, I felt an even more intense burn coming toward me and going through me from his direction, as he shot a searing glare directly into my eyes and said, “You no good (so and so), I’ll never (bleeping) take you anywhere again.”
We did have common interests, though. Bob was, after all, the man who introduced what was then a brand new product, Miller Lite Beer, to Cumberland in the mid-1970s, and though I was not old enough to drink it at that time, I have since done my fair share through the years to “move as much product” as I can for the good folks at Western Maryland Distributing, for which Bob was always grateful, even though he personally never touched the stuff.
Our chief common interest, however, turned out to be journalism, even though it took me a few years to realize why.
As a younger man, I was always flattered that Bob took the interest in my career that he did, as I had been a sportswriter at the Cumberland Times-News for several years before being named sports editor in 1990 or ’91. Bob knew the business and he knew it well, and he helped me quite a bit by not only peppering me with questions as to why I did or did not report something in a certain way, but by offering constructive criticism and always encouraging words along the way.
As I mentioned in an earlier piece here about Bob, he always had your back, but neither was he shy about telling you the truth. He told you what he felt you needed to hear, not just what you thought you wanted to hear.
So not only was I grateful for his attention, his knowledge and his assistance, I was also very curious, as I finally asked the great J. Suter Kegg, “How does the Beer Baron of Western Maryland know so much about the newspaper business?”
As it turned out, it was a stupid question to ask. I could tell by the way Suter laughed in my face before I was even finished asking it. As Suter would tell me, Bob had been trained to be a journalist and he began his professional career in becoming quite an accomplished journalist.
Bob was a 1959 graduate of Cumberland’s Allegany High School and a 1961 graduate of Potomac State College of West Virginia University, having studied English and journalism. In 1963, he graduated from West Virginia University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
From 1963 to 1965, he went to work for United Press International (UPI) as a wire service reporter in Charleston, West Virginia where he worked newspaper and radio desks and served as West Virginia Statehouse reporter, covering various stories outside the office.
To supplement his income at the time, Bob wrote stories about actual crimes for “True Detective” magazine and “True Crime” magazine.
Bob then served as the UPI bureau chief in Baltimore in 1965-66 where he managed the three-man bureau servicing radio station and newspaper subscribers, including coverage of Baltimore major league sports. In fact, during Colts and Orioles games, he sat in the Memorial Stadium pressbox next to Suter, for whom he worked while serving as a college intern when Suter was the sports editor of the Cumberland Evening and Sunday Times.
From 1967 to 1968, it was back to Charleston where Bob became a regional executive, selling UPI news and photo services in West Virginia and Kentucky.
Upon the death of his father, Bob returned to Cumberland to help his mother and, after the gig at WUOK, his business career was afoot.
With all that Bob Gornall accomplished and provided as a businessman, he accomplished and provided just as much, if not more, as a journalist. Just as I had not realized this, neither did many others who had met Bob and got to know him later in his life.
Until Suter gave me the lowdown, Bob had never mentioned that part of his professional life to me. Once I asked him about it, though, he was glad to talk about it. In fact, he loved to talk about it as a fire seemed to burn in his manner when he spoke of his career in journalism. It was hard, thankless work, he said. But rewarding work. Likely the most rewarding work he had ever done, he said.
In 1964, while reporting for UPI, Bob somehow convinced state officials to allow him to spend three days and two nights at the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville posing as a condemned man charged with murder in Kanawha County. He was the first reporter permitted to spend time behind the walls of the state penitentiary and his three-part series shed light on life along death row.
In retrospect, it seemed to make perfect sense to me that the only person I had ever known who could be perfectly comfortable on death row would be Bob Gornall. Though, as it turned out, that was far from being the truth.
Details of Bob Gornall’s reporting from within the walls of Moundsville will appear here this week.
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
