Like the Ash on His Cigarette, Pete’s Party Defied the Odds

(Editorial excerpt from the Salisbury Post, April 6, 1964)

It was back in the winter of ’57 that we first heard Pete DiMizio explain his grandiose plan for a National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Awards program.

We weren’t listening too closely because, for us, it was a special occasion.  Rowan had a new assistant home demonstration agent, prettiest little thing we’d ever seen, and as the Post’s farm editor, we were digging for news.  Personal news.

“Whadda ya think?” asked Pete who, despite years in the South, still spoke Newark-ese.

“I think,” replied the home agent, “that I’d put the NSSA in the same category as the ash on your cigarette.  It doesn’t have a chance!”

Funny thing about Pete and his cigarettes.  He smoked all the time.  He never took the cigarette out of his mouth.  As words came forth, the cigarette bobbed up and down but the ash, defying the law of gravity, never seemed to fall.  It just curled and curled.

Pete DiMizio was a sports buff – boxing promoter, the athlete’s friend, the sports reporter’s benefactor.  If he made any money, it must’ve been in the earlier years when he ran the Genesee Beer Garden on Council Street.

When Pete started his restaurant after the war, he started anew.  Nothing but the best for his beloved Salisbury.  He brought in a high-priced Italian chef and a higher priced band.  Within a month or two, the band, like the chef, was gone, but Pete’s wife Becky was making better pizzas and lasagna than the chef ever did.

The biggest thing that came out of Pete’s restaurant, as far as promotions go, was the big fall banquet for sports reporters.  Even the dean, Frank Spencer of Winston-Salem Journal, never before had feasted upon an 11-course meal.

Pete’s party was such a success that he wondered:  Why not pitch a wing-ding for sportswriters from all over the country?  They make the All-Americas, but they never get any credit for it.

Everybody told Pete it’d cost too much, that no one would come.  Who ever heard of a restaurateur putting on a $10,000 party in a podunk town like Salisbury without a gimmick?  There was no gimmick, but Pete tried anyway.

With the help of Post Sports Editor Horace Billings, his wife Becky and a few others, he’d spent months putting together a mailing list.  He’d sent out 6,000 ballots at no small cost.  The banquet had been planned.  And winners were being tabulated when Pete died of cancer.  The banquet wasn’t postponed.  It was cancelled in 1958.

Salisbury was in the doldrums in the ‘50’s.  Our biggest industry, the Spencer Shops, was being closed, and the new plants were going to neighboring cities.

Jim Cobb, 34-year old general manager of Owens-Illinois, purposely was made president of the Chamber of Commerce to pump enthusiasm into the city and county.  He was a hard worker, an unwavering optimist and an industrialist highly respected by the entire community.

He exuded confidence.  He urged city-county unity.  He urged the county to tackle big projects.  Cobb’s enthusiasm rubbed off on young Ed McKenzie, a local surgeon, as the two hacked around the front side of the Country Club course one Sunday afternoon.

McKenzie told Cobb he’d joined the Chamber of Commerce, but “they’ve never asked me to do anything.”

“Don’t wait to be asked,” replied Cobb.  “Just sink your teeth into something and ask others to help.”

The abandoned NSSA program was what McKenzie sunk his teeth into.

When Red Smith said he couldn’t come, McKenzie called him.  He kept calling long distance until Red agreed to come.  When Lindsey Nelson said he couldn’t come, McKenzie went over his head.  He took a train to New York and saw to it that Lindsey’s boss made him come.

McKenzie’s personal expenses mounted and his practice suffered.  But he succeeded in generating some hope for the NSSA at home.  He even changed the atmosphere.

Salisbury was like a high school where athletics are supreme, where any boy who doesn’t go out for football is a sissy and not a girl will date him.  People who could but wouldn’t pay $100 to host the first NSSA program weren’t blackballed; they were merely placed on probation.

More than 100 people became hosts for the first affair in 1960.  After dozens of phone calls, several trips to New York and other distant points, McKenzie sighed with relief when 41 state and national winners accepted invitations to the first banquet.  We’d bet him there wouldn’t be 14.

When the ex-home agent and the ex-farm reported rubbed sleepers out of their eyes the morning after, we knew, like all who participated in the first affair April 10-12, 1960, that the NSSA was here to stay.

It was like the ash on the tip of Pete’s cigarette.  The ash defied gravity and never fell.  The NSSA defied perhaps greater odds and became a success.