Donovan Short, former director of content for Townsquare Media's Casper radio stations and a longtime colleague and friend of Frank Gambino, has a word for Frank.
Magic.
Gambino’s career followed the evolution of Wyoming sports media itself, from television and radio in the 1980s to digital journalism with WyoPreps, where he was still crisscrossing the state covering athletes until his death Thursday.
It wasn't just the voice or the encyclopedic knowledge of Wyoming sports. It was the way Gambino could walk into a gym, a radio studio or onto a football sideline and somehow make the place feel more alive.
Gambino, 63, died Thursday in Casper.
For more than four decades, Wyoming knew him as the sports guy — an unmistakable face and voice that appeared along football sidelines, beside basketball courts, at wrestling mats, in television studios and over the radio.
He was loud, opinionated and profane.
He had a temper, a tenderness and an astonishing ability to structure sentences that were so uniquely Frank.
Sports were his religion.
He could argue with you, aggravate you, make you laugh and make you want to strangle him, sometimes before lunch, and if Frank Gambino interviewed a high school athlete, it meant something.
Casper media personality and blogger Cathy Holman, who worked with Gambino at K2 Radio, saw that from both sides of the microphone. Her own children were among the Wyoming athletes Gambino interviewed.
“He was respected by adults and kids alike, and loved by them,” Holman said. “They were never nervous when they were talking to him because he just had a way about him.”
Short, another longtime friend and colleague, put it more simply.
“There will never be another Frank Gambino.”
‘Where Did Price Find This Guy?’
Former K2 broadcaster Bob Price hired him more than 40 years ago, when Gambino was fresh out of Drake University in Iowa and looking to begin a broadcasting career.
K2 Radio and Television operated out of the same Casper building then, near what Price remembers as essentially the end of East Second Street.
Gambino was a newcomer to the Wyoming broadcasting fraternity.
People noticed.
Some wondered aloud where Price had found him.
“It certainly wasn't apparent at the start, trust me,” Price told Cowboy State Daily, but there was something about Gambino.
“I could tell that there was something there that others didn't see,” Price said.
The spark became skill, and the skill became a career.
Gambino would eventually be chosen Wyoming Sportscaster of the Year three times, in 2005, 2007 and 2016.
One Person
“The essence of good radio is simply me talking to you,” Price said.
Not all of you.
Not the audience.
“You focus on one person, and that is your audience,” Price said. “No matter how many are listening or how few are listening.”
Gambino understood that.
“He used his talents very, very well,” Price said.
It might explain why people across Wyoming who never actually knew Frank Gambino could feel as if they did.
Sports broadcasting can easily become numbers.
Scores, times, yards, pins, points, records.
Gambino knew all of those, and he understood the people inside them.
Wyoming sports rarely arrive with ESPN cameras and reporters stacked three deep around an athlete.
Gambino showed up anyway, and when he did, he could make a Wyoming kid feel as if the whole sporting world had arrived to watch.
Drew Kirby, host of My Country 95.5 and a former colleague and longtime friend, has spent the days since Gambino's death reading comments from athletes he interviewed over the years.
“He singled out every one, you know, and made them feel like such a rock star,” Kirby said.
‘He Was Just Frank’
Lisa Reams, director of sales for Townsquare Media, met Gambino when she interviewed for her job.
“Larger than life and so welcoming,” she said.
Gambino was part of an original crew that made the radio station feel exciting and alive, she said.
“He was all about integrity of whatever he reported on,” Reams said.
There was no polished media persona to turn on.
“He was just Frank,” she said.
Authenticity is a quality nearly everybody claims and relatively few people possess.
Gambino did not have an alternate setting.
Kirby remembers that, too.
“Frank was Frank, and there's no other Frank like Frank,” he said.
That included the vocabulary.
“Frank was the best cusser that I'd ever met in my life,” Kirby said.
When Gambino became frustrated with an article or some piece of equipment, Kirby didn't have to be in the room to know it.
“I could hear him cussing all the way to my door,” he said.
Holman encountered the same phenomenon. The first time she remembers Gambino, he was walking through the radio station hallway shouting about some piece of technology.
“Technology and Frank were never friends,” Holman said. "But he had a heart of gold.”
His pairing with K2 Radio host Brian Scott became especially memorable.
“The banter that those two had was the most entertaining radio,” Reams said. “They were so genuine with each other.”
Gambino started the K2 morning show before eventually turning it over to Scott while remaining part of the program delivering sports.
Then one Sunday afternoon, Scott died in a motorcycle crash.
By 6 o'clock the next morning, the microphones still had to come on.
Without Brian
There are deaths people have time to prepare for, but this wasn't one of them.
Scott was gone Sunday.
“We had no time to repair,” Price said. “But radio is radio.”
At 6 a.m., somebody had to sit down.
Price returned to what the staff called TBC — the big chair.
He surrounded himself with Short, Gambino and others from K2.
For four straight hours, they stayed live.
Listeners called.
Friends remembered.
People tried to understand the incomprehensible in real time.
“The things he said showed the inside of Frank Gambino,” Price said.
It is perhaps easy, with somebody as colorful as Gambino, to let the personality become the whole portrait.
Price remembers something else from that morning.
“Despite arguing with people or whatever the case might be, he always had this inner self that came through that was warmth,” Price said.
“You knew he really cared about you. You knew that he was wanting to help whenever he can.”
Price was struck by Gambino's ability to gather himself while grieving his friend and still find words for everybody listening.
AWFUL
Then there was the other side of Gambino's vocabulary.
When the University of Wyoming Cowboys had committed some particularly terrible football sin, Price remembers Gambino reaching for a favorite judgment.
“AWFUL.”
Not bad.
Not disappointing.
If Frank Gambino declared something awful, it had crossed a line.
His profanity had rhythm.
Anger had structure.
There was something endearing about it because there was so little pretense.
He golfed the same way.
Price remembers a man who somehow made two holes in one, but golfed in thrift-store T-shirts, Bermuda shorts and white tube socks. Yet on TV, people saw him in a handsome sport coat and tie above the anchor desk.
On television, a handsome sport coat and tie appeared above the anchor desk.
One Of The Greats
Awards establish that someone was respected, but they are not as useful in explaining why someone was loved.
Gambino accumulated them anyway.
The three Wyoming Sportscaster of the Year honors, recognition from Wyoming football organizations, decades of work across radio, television and digital sports coverage.
Thousands upon thousands of athletes, coaches, games and interviews, but when Reams heard Gambino was dead that isn't what she thought about.
“Utter shock,” she said.
Then came the realization that Wyoming media had lost something almost impossible to replace.
“It didn't matter if it was television or radio,” she said. “We just lost one of the greats.”
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
