You are treasure, Blaine!
Thanks! Sam
----- Original Message -----
From: Blaine Bierley
To: Sam Kegley
Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2010 9:43 AM
Subject: Remembering Pete Minego
“Pete Minego”
Do you remember Pete Minego? When I was a student at Portsmouth High School in the middle 1950s, he was an institution at the Portsmouth Times newspaper.
Pete was a veteran newspaperman who was born in Portsmouth in 1880. He became a “cub reporter” for the old Portsmouth Blade sometime around the turn of the century. He had been with the Times since 1910, serving through the years as a reporter, a copyreader, a sportswriter, city editor, and managing editor. Pete had covered the major news stories in Portsmouth for generations.
In 1930 he began writing the daily column that most of Portsmouth’s sports fans knew and loved--“Minego’s Sports Gossip.” If you read the sports pages in the Times, chances were that Pete’s column was the first thing that your eyes met--even before the ball scores.
Pete’s “gossip” column was a conglomeration of anecdotes, pats on the back for various local people and enterprises, philosophy, sports, and wisecracks. There were usually quotes from his fictional “Uncle Zeb” on life and times in general, such as: “Uncle Zeb sez dynamite and an old maid have something in common. They’re harmless if you let ‘em alone.”
Pete lived on Bond Street in Portsmouth and was a lifelong bachelor.
They say he had a reputation as a “card shark” at the local Elks’ lodge.
Every once in a while, when I’m reading the sports pages, my mind wanders back to Portsmouth and Pete Minego’s column.
Blaine S. Bierley
(PHS '55)
Hilliard, OH
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