FRANK GAMBINO: A Remembrance by Bob Price

FRANK GAMBINO 
A Remembrance by Bob Price

There are people who pass through a broadcasting career, and there are people who become part of its soundtrack.

For me, Frank Gambino will always be part of the soundtrack.

I hired Frank more than four decades ago, when he was fresh out of Drake University and looking to make his way in broadcasting.

In those days, K2 Radio and Television shared studios at what was pretty much the end of East Second Street in Casper. Frank arrived as this young fellow from somewhere far outside the Wyoming broadcasting fraternity, and I can remember some of the guys looking at him, then looking at me, and occasionally asking out loud:
"Where did Price find this guy?" 

I knew exactly what they were seeing. But I saw something else. There was a spark.

And over the years, that spark developed into one of the most colorful, knowledgeable, and competent sports journalists Wyoming ever had the privilege to watch and listen to.

Our system in those days was pretty simple. You started in Radio. You learned how to think on your feet, how to write, how to ad-lib, how to handle the unexpected and, most importantly, how to communicate with one person sitting on the other side of that microphone.

If that worked, we moved you into Television. And yes, Television. Never "TV."
I wouldn't allow it. I had too much respect for the medium.

Frank learned both of them very well. The learning process occasionally had its moments.

Frank had a bit of a temper in those early days, usually directed at himself. One day I was walking down the long hallway of the K2 building when an entire audio cartridge, about the size of an old eight-track tape, came sailing down the hallway toward me.

I ducked.

It hit something and broke into pieces.

Apparently Frank was having trouble recording a piece of audio for a sportscast and airtime was only minutes away.

Frank and I had what might best be described as an intimate and very brief conversation. To the best of my recollection, no more audio cartridges ever came flying down the hallway.

Frank was also fortunate, as all of us were, to work with the wonderfully talented and much-loved George Kay.

George saw what I had seen in Frank, and over the years he became an important mentor to him. That relationship went far beyond broadcasting. Years later, after George had retired and illness had set in, Frank would drive to Douglas just to spend time with him.

That tells you something about Frank that no list of awards ever could.

And there were awards. Frank would eventually be named Wyoming Sportscaster of the Year three times.

He earned them.

Frank was one of the finest readers of broadcast copy I ever worked with. Almost flawless. Radio or Television, it didn't matter. Put copy in front of him, turn on the microphone or the camera, and Frank delivered it.

But as good as he was reading copy, I think he was even better when there wasn't any.
For a time I was doing the K2 Radio morning show. Rich Bircumshaw was my news anchor, and Frank handled our live sports updates.

Those mornings were live Radio the way I still believe Radio was meant to be.
At any given moment, I might have Don Day live from his studio in Cheyenne doing weather, Rich live from one of our news studios, Frank live from another studio, and Brian Scott broadcasting from a hot air balloon somewhere. Then I might throw somebody on the telephone into the mix.

None of us could see each other.

There were no visual cues.

No raised fingers telling somebody when to speak.

And somehow, nobody stepped on anybody else. It was like a well-rehearsed play that had never been rehearsed.

Frank was magnificent at it.

Give him a subject and turn him loose.

Maybe the Cowboys had blown a play the previous Saturday that cost them a football game. Frank would analyze it, explain it, and eventually, if the offense had been particularly egregious, reach for one of his favorite words.

"AWFUL."

Frank didn't overuse it. That was what made it so effective.

When Gambino said something was AWFUL, you understood that the situation had moved well beyond merely bad.

Then there was golf.

Frank loved the game and, as I remember it, managed the rather remarkable feat of recording two holes in one.

His golf attire was equally remarkable.

Frank apparently believed that golf clubs should never be concealed from public view and that a proper golf ensemble consisted of a T-shirt, usually acquired free at some sporting event, Bermuda-length shorts and white tube socks.

Come to think of it, his Television wardrobe wasn't always terribly different.

The viewers saw a handsome sport coat and tie.

What they could not see, safely hidden behind the anchor desk, could occasionally look remarkably like Frank had wandered in from the golf course.

That was Frank.

There was no pretense about him. What you saw was pretty much what you got.

And underneath the sportscaster, the golfer, the wonderfully opinionated sports fan, and that unmistakable Gambino personality was something much more important.
Frank loved his family. Everybody who knew him knew that.

Years ago we occasionally put his mother on the air live for her birthday. "Mama Gambino" became something of a K2 personality herself. She was wonderful on the Radio, particularly when she was telling an embarrassing story about her son.

Frank would sit there and take it.

Mostly.

I don't think there was any question, listening to those conversations, how much those two loved each other.

Frank's broadcasting career would take many turns over the years, but he never stopped doing what he loved. His work with WyoPreps took him across Wyoming, telling the stories of young athletes in communities large and very small. He understood that a high school game in a little Wyoming town mattered every bit as much to the people sitting in those bleachers as a major college game mattered somewhere else.

He respected the athletes.

He respected the games.

And he respected the audience.

I always wanted to produce a segment with him called:
"Getting Frank with Frank."

I never did.

I wish I had.

But perhaps, in a way, we got Frank with Frank every time he turned on a microphone.

He didn't manufacture a broadcasting personality.

He didn't need one.

He was Frank Gambino.

Broadcasting changed over those forty-plus years. Companies consolidated. Staffs got smaller. Both Frank and I eventually found ourselves on the receiving end of the downsizing that became so common in our business.

But neither of us entirely went away.

After my official retirement, I continued working a few hours a week as Vice President of Community Partnerships, and Frank was still doing morning sports for the cluster.

So there we were again.

The two of us wandering the hallways of the downtown K2 Radio building - a building I once owned - like some strange version of old home week.

Forty years earlier, I had been the guy who hired this young broadcaster and wondered just where that spark I saw in him might lead.

Now we were simply two old broadcasters who had somehow managed to keep finding our way back to a microphone.

The last time I saw Frank was only a few days before he died.

We were together with others at a celebration of life for Dave Nutter, another radio personality all of us had been privileged to work with. In typical Wyoming fashion, Dave had decided he wanted to attend his own celebration of life, so he held it while he was still very much alive.

Frank was there.

There were rumors that he might soon be getting married again.

I don't know what was true and what wasn't.

I just know Frank looked happy.

And I'm grateful that the last time I saw him, that's how he looked.

Happy.

When I think of him now, the awards aren't the first things that come to mind. I see that hallway at K2.

Actually, I see two hallways.

In one, a young Frank Gambino has just sent an audio cartridge sailing past my head.
In the other, more than forty years later, a couple of old broadcasters are wandering around together, still somehow part of the place and the profession that brought us together in the first place.

I see George Kay.

I hear Mama Gambino on the telephone.

I see those white tube socks.

And somewhere in there I can still hear that unmistakable voice rendering its final judgment on some particularly disastrous Wyoming football play:

"AWFUL."

Losing Frank is awful.

Knowing him was anything but.

It was a privilege.

And if broadcasting is really a collection of voices that somehow remain with us long after the microphone has been turned off, then I suspect Frank's voice will be around Wyoming for a very long time.

I'm glad I found that guy.