‘There will never be another.’ Former CDT sports editor Ron Bracken dies at 81
Ron Bracken, a longtime Centre County sports reporter and a founding member of the Centre County Sports Hall of Fame, died Monday. He was 81.
Born in Port Matilda, he was a 1961 graduate of Bald Eagle Area School District and very proud of it. He attended Penn State for two years before getting married and entering the job market. He worked at the Centre Daily Times from 1967 to 2008 as a sports reporter, editor and columnist, leaving an enduring legacy after countless interviews, deadlines and bylines.
“He didn’t want to report what people wanted to hear, necessarily. He wanted to report what was true, what was accurate,” his daughter, Janine Barony, said. “And he took a lot of backlash at times for his comments about things that a lot of the community, the Penn State football fan groups, did not appreciate. But he would not waver when it came to putting in writing what he thought was right, what was fair, what was not right, what was not fair, and if that meant, you know, people were unhappy with him, then so be it. He was willing to accept that.”
Though he became a symbol of local sports journalism, it wasn’t something he studied in school or his dream career. Rather, it’s something he “just sort of fell into,” he said in a 2009 oral history interview.
While he was a student at Penn State, he didn’t take any journalism courses but he always had high grades in English classes. He was also a huge sports fanatic, which helped his reporting. The first newspaper article he ever wrote was for the CDT, covering high school football.
He turned sports reporting into a career, and one that left a lasting impact on Centre County. He had a knack for knowing how to ask questions based on the game and did a tremendous job for both local sports and Penn State football coverage, John Wetzler said. Wetzler coached various sports at Bellefonte for over 40 years and served on the Centre County Sports Hall of Fame board with Bracken.
‘The face of the Centre Daily Times’
Bracken began covering sports in a unique time in Centre County history, when Joe Paterno was only in his second season as Penn State’s head football coach. Bracken covered both of the Nittany Lions’ 1980s national championship seasons, in addition to some of the county’s top scholastic sports achievements — such as BEA’s top wrestling ranking in the country in 1999 and eventual Chicago Bears FB Matt Suhey taking the State College Little Lions by storm in the 1970s.
“His memory was so great. I remember being at a wedding where he would just tell story after story after story, and just fascinate the entire table,” Wetzler said. “He loved to tell stories and he loved to get recognition for local student-athletes. And I just think he did a superb job with no real formal training. He probably couldn’t do that in today’s world.”
Terry Nau, the former sports editor of The Pennsylvania Mirror, a daily morning newspaper in the 1960s and ‘70s, said Bracken became the face of the CDT over the course of his career.
“Ron really evolved from the guy who walked into (former CDT sports editor) Doug McDonald’s office one day and asked to be a stringer, and within two decades, he was really the face of the Centre Daily Times sports department and his column was what everybody wanted to read,” Nau said in a phone interview. “And yet, he also was a local guy, so he could go out and cover wrestling or county league baseball. ... What he had over all of us, was he had institutional knowledge of Centre County, from top to bottom. He lived it.”
He added: “When we would walk into a place together, everybody knew who Ron was. I think as time went on, he became more and more of the face of the Centre Daily Times. So, you know, it’s just a vanishing breed.”
Bracken was someone who everyone liked — even when they were in direct competition with each other over stories, as Nau was.
“We had a competition for stories, and it was a friendly competition, but we were definitely rivals in the early days and eventually we became good friends and remained in touch on and off over the next 40 years,” Nau said.
The Pennsylvania Mirror and the Centre Daily Times, especially the sports departments, were “old school rivals,” he said, which Bracken wrote a chapter about in “We Had Ink in Our Blood,” a book of memories from former Mirror and CDT staffers co-edited by Nau and R. Thomas Berner.
‘There will never be another’
Doug Dyke, athletic director at BEA, knew Bracken first as a reporter who covered his high school sports teams when he was a student in the ‘80s. When Bracken was covering an event, it was a big deal, he said.
Student-athletes were always comfortable around Bracken, he said, as they knew he would do a good job writing about them. He had the name recognition in the area that made the parents comfortable, too.
“I remember in baseball games ... we had a parent that would give out M&M’s for like, base hits. And the joke was, if he was at the game, we’d always make him decide whether it was really a hit or an error,” Dyke said. “The kids, no matter the age difference, I think always felt comfortable around him too because they knew that he would write something good about you. The parents knew him, so, again, there was that name recognition.”
They turned into colleagues when Dyke began working at BEA in the ‘90s and became good friends. Bracken was always professional on the job but Dyke said once you got to know him, you had to watch for pranks or practical jokes. He was very personable, he said, and was always there to listen to someone’s problems and give advice or his opinion based on his years of experience.
“I hope I can touch half the number of lives he touched,” Dyke said.
Bracken was inducted into seven halls of fame: Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association’s Hall of Fame, Centre County Sports HOF, National Wrestling HOF, PA Wrestling HOF, District 6 Wrestling HOF, Bald Eagle Area Wrestling HOF and District 6 Softball HOF. He won many reporting and editing awards, including three national Associated Press Sports Editor Awards, two state Associated Press Managing Editor Awards and 11 Keystone Awards from PNA.
“And I’ll tell you what, he deserved all of his awards,” Dick Rhoades, the wrestling coach at BEA for 32 years beginning in the 1970s, said.
Rhoades was hired as the wrestling coach at BEA in 1970 and Bracken often reported on the wrestling matches.
“When we would lose a match, he would interview the other coach first and just give me time to settle down and become calm again. Because he knew when we lost a match, it was just ripping at me and tearing my heart. And he, like I said, he gave me five or 10 extra minutes to straighten up,” he recalled.
Bracken was always a professional and extremely knowledgeable on any sport he covered.
“He and Doug McDonald, who just recently passed, there will never be another two like them,” Rhoades said. “... For a newspaper to have two people like that at the same time is unbelievable.”
Bracken previously said he hoped his main legacy would be that he helped establish the Centre County Sports Hall of Fame in 2016. Wetzler, a current board member, said Bracken helped give recognition to people from older generations who younger people may not know.
He continued to attend the meetings and be part of the banquets until his health no longer allowed him to.
“He had a lot of good insights and suggestions for our organization. He’s going to be someone that we’re going to miss greatly,” Wetzler said.
An overachiever in reporting & family life
For as much as he accomplished in his professional life, the same can be said for his personal life. He was married to his wife, Joan, for 50 years until her death in 2016, and had one daughter, Janine Barony.
Barony put it simply: “He was the best. The best.”
“From the time I have had any memories, I was Daddy’s girl. I always wanted to be with my dad. And my dad, he grew up with no father in his life and for a man who had no fatherly influence, he had to forge his own way and figure things out on his own. And he absolutely over achieved just like he did with his sports writing,” she said.
Working in journalism can often mean spending evenings, nights and/or weekends working. When Bracken was first offered a full-time position at the CDT, he initially didn’t take it because he didn’t want to be away from his family.
He hated being away, Barony said, especially on holidays. When Penn State played a bowl game, that would often mean he would have to leave before or on Christmas. During his time at the CDT, Bracken served three stints as sports editor, she said, and during at least one of those occasions he stepped down as editor because he wanted to be with his family on holidays and not on an airplane.
“The fact of how he was regarded as a sports writer, I think what I would like to have remembered about him would be that, that carried over into his home life and to his family,” Barony said. “There was never a doubt in our minds that he absolutely cherished, he loved his family more than anything in the world ... he knew the feeling was mutual but I feel like there’s no way that we could ever give him or show him half of the love that he showed us, always.”
Barony has two daughters, who Bracken adored. She still has an article he wrote years ago about what Christmas meant to him, and he mentions his twin granddaughters, calling them the twin lights of his life.
“He absolutely thought the world of them,” she said.
Reporter Josh Moyer contributed to this report.
