C. Robert Paul, Jr. served the USOC from April 1, 1967 through his retirement on July 1, 1990. His roles included director of informational services, director of public information, director of communications, special assistant to the executive director and archivist. Prior to that important role, Paul was the sports information director at the University of Pennsylvania where he was integral in establishing the Big 5 rivalries and in elevating the Penn Relays into one of the foremost track and field events annually.
Paul was the second person to hold the office of CoSIDA President, serving in 1956-57. He was inducted into the first class of the CoSIDA Hall of Fame (in 1969) and received a CoSIDA Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.
by Mike Moran
One of the American Olympic family’s most respected, unique linchpins finally stepped through the mists of this life and into infinitude this weekend on Long Island, and with his death goes an important cornerstone of a long ago United States Olympic Committee and its remarkable history.
C. Robert Paul, Jr. died at 93 on Friday, bringing conclusion to a lifetime spent amassing knowledge, history and records of amateur athletics and the Olympic Games, garnering friendships among respected journalists and gold medalists alike.
Bob Paul, born in, raised in and forever a citizen of Philadelphia despite a two-decade stopover in Colorado Springs, was one of the few remaining links between today’s streamlined, diverse, and
powerful USOC and the tidy, patrician, Ivy League-dominated Olympic House on Park Avenue in New York City.
photo to right: Paul was honored in February of 2011 with a 2009 Lifetime Achievement award from the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH).
A 1939 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the esteemed Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, Bobby Paul served in the United States Navy during World War II before launching a career in communications that spanned four decades, ultimately bringing him to Colorado Springs as part of the staff of only 10 men and women that packed up and left New York City to relocate in the Rockies in the summer of 1978 as the new Olympic House opened.
The library-on-legs Paul had never driven a car as a USOC staffer in New York, commuting by train for 11 years from his home in Merion, outside of Philly, to Grand Central Terminal and hoofing it to the old Olympic House at 57 Park Avenue for his workday in his cramped, document-strewn and cigar smoke filled third floor office, then repeating the process, going home to Philly in the evenings.
But often, he simply worked late and stayed the night at Olympic House, sleeping in executive director F. Don Miller’s office on the fifth floor. Miller told me once that he always knew when Bob had slept there because of the cigar ashes on his carpet that he found in the early mornings when he arrived.
His 1967 arrival as the USOC’s first-ever Director of Public Information and press chief followed an extraordinary career path that embraced seven years as Director of Development for the old, powerful AAU and seven years as the Sports Information Director at Penn.
At The University, he helped create college basketball’s most storied tradition and unique rivalry, the Big 5. This frenetic intracity rivalry among Penn, Villanova, LaSalle, Temple and St. Joseph’s at the venerable Palestra was a 30-year icon in American sports.
Paul assisted in making the springtime Penn Relays into the nation’s most respected collegiate track and field gathering, became President of the College Sports Information Directors of America, a Board member of the Football Writers of America, the founding Board of the Basketball Writers Association of America and on the Board of the National Football Hall of Fame for five years.
He chaired the NCAA’s Public Relations Committee and even served as a Vice President of the Americas for the International Cinema and Television Federation.
Paul earned every honor on the menu of CoSIDA, the association of college sports information directors, including induction to its Hall of Fame and Lifetime Achievement Award.
When he joined the USOC, he was a legend in the business already.
When I met him in October, 1977, at a Football Writers luncheon in New York City, I had no inkling of how our lives and paths would soon intersect and throw us together.
I was the SID at the University of Colorado and in the midst of an advance publicity trip to the city ahead of the CU-Army game at West Point. He was there with Baaron Pittenger, who was leaving Harvard to join the USOC, which was in the final stages of announcing its move to Colorado Springs a year later. Paul had made a big impact at the USOC in 10 years, launching
The Olympian Magazine, helping to create the Olympic Academy, and becoming the media voice of the smallish organization and spokesman at the Olympic Games for the USA Team from Grenoble to Montreal by the time we met.
Paul decided which writers would get the coveted credentials to cover the Games, even granting the rookie film-maker Bud Greenspan his first pass to cover the Olympic games in Mexico City that launched the cinematic legend’s extraordinary career.
The late Philadelphia sports writing legend Frank Dolson said of Bob, “Throughout the country there were media people who call Bob Paul when they want the facts. Not a recitation of some party line nonsense designed to put everything in a good light. Not the vague generalities that some publicity men and women are in the habit of handing out. When Bob told you something, you could believe it. It’s true.”
But times were changing at the USOC, and there were conversations on Park Avenue about a new philosophy in dealing with a demanding media and the growing number of reporters at the Games and who covered the Olympics more intensely.
Bob Paul, at the Games, loved being around the athletes, and had his press office within the Olympic Village where he could mingle with the Olympians. He had only one or two press attaches, like Cotton Bowl czar Jim Brock, to deal with the increasing demands of reporters for access to the athletes and services like special tickets to prime events.
As Miller and Pittenger pondered these demands as they prepared for the relocation to Colorado Springs, I was unaware of any of it, dealing with the pending 1978 football season in Boulder and getting ready for my summer break. A series of fateful incidents led me to Colorado Springs that summer after a phone call from Pittenger about some help with the media at the inaugural National Sports Festival and to a surprising offer that autumn to become a member of the USOC staff, with the commitment to succeed Bob Paul in the near future.
I had already followed one legend when I took the CU job in 1968, the late Fred “Count” Casotti, and doing this again became a very sensitive and delicate experience, but I waded into it and never looked back, becoming the chief spokesman and the voice of the USOC for the next quarter century. Bob became Special Assistant to Miller, archivist, historian and counselor to Alumni and scores of programs. He enjoyed his special relationships with the greats - Wilma Rudolph, Micki King, Donna de Varona, Al Oerter, Willie Davenport, Tenley Albright, Pat McCormick, Willye White, Ed Burke, John Naber, and scores of others, and he was the glue that bonded the USOC with its past.
When I would see him at our meetings at some table over breakfast somewhere, he was in the company of giants like the aristocratic American IOC member and yachtsman Julian K. (Dooley) Roosevelt, Doug Roby, another IOC member and former USOC President, or John B. (Jack) Kelly, a four-time Olympic rower, brother of Princess Grace and future USOC President. Often he was shoulder-to-shoulder with powerful USOC Board members and officers and always, our Olympic greats of the past. He knew ABC Sports boss Roone Arledge and Jim McKay as pals, and he introduced me to Bob Mathias when I first took my office at Olympic House.
But always, there he was in his office, hidden behind mountains of documents, publications and records, master of the archives and the history of the American Olympic movement.
When a visitor came to see him, Bob would rise from his chair wearing his Mr. Magoo-like glasses, switch his ever-lit cigar to his left hand and offer a handshake. if I entered his sanctuary to ask him if he knew where some important paper was, he would hesitate for a few seconds, telling me, “My boy, I have it right here,” and thrust his hand into one of the small mountains of papers on his desk and emerge with it.
And he still never drove, either. His amazing wife, Texas girl Lyde Gene, would drop him off before 7:00 each morning in some battleship-sized 1970s Pontiac Bonneville they had found, pick him up for lunch every so often, then come back most evenings to retrieve him.
But, as it was often in New York, he would work late and stay the night, shuffling up the stairs to Miller’s new office, taking off his shoes, and sleeping on the couch. Miller would find the telltale cigar ashes on his carpet in the morning and Bob downstairs at his desk, acting like nothing unusual had happened.
He was gracious to me with dignity as he turned over the reins and let me take off, and he was a kind, gentle man and a superb story teller of unmatched reputation.
On October 9, 1990, in Philadelphia, of course, at the Hotel Atop The Bellevue, we staged a retirement party for Bob. it was attended by some of our best writers and columnists, Olympic athletes and old AAU pals of his and notables.
Our former boss, Col. F. Don Miller, said that evening, “Much of Bob Paul’s life has been an unstoppable ascension of Mount Olympus, and this evening, he reaches its summit. Therefore, Bob Paul’s life and dedication now define him- he is truly an Olympian.”
I saw him last in the spring of 2005, up in George Steinbrenner’s box at Yankee Stadium. Bob emerged in the company of former White Sox official Eddie Einhorn, shuffling over and saying, “My boy, you look older.”
In the last month, the USOC family has lost Bud Greenspan, Dorothy Franey Langkop and now C. Robert Paul, Jr.
As nighttime begins to fall in Colorado Springs today, I will think of them with a heavy heart. I am reminded now, as more and more of those who helped to build the foundation of the USOC leave us, of the words of the author, Norman Maclean of Montana, as he stood in a river with his fly rod one late afternoon, “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”
Rest in peace, Bob Paul.
Mike Moran was the chief spokesman for the United States Olympic Committee for a quarter century, through 13 Games from Lake Placid to Salt Lake City. The Omaha, Nebraska native was the Sports Information Director at the University of Colorado for a decade before joining the USOC in 1978 as it left New York City for Colorado Springs. He was the Senior Communications Counselor for NYC2012, New York City’s Olympic bid group from 2003-2005 and is now a media consultant.
In 2002, Moran was inducted into the CoSIDA Hall of Fame.
Reach him at:
mike@thesportscorp.org and read more of his columns at
www.coloradospringssports.org.