Solomon: Gonillo’s charm prevalent on, off air

Dave Solomon

(09/25/2007)

We had a running gag — Bill Gonillo and I — each time he put a microphone in front of his subject.

In a single breath, he could ask a question, give his version of the answer, interject a hilarious story in between, and when his air supply ran low — and only then — wait for the answer.

Come to think of it, he shared a running gag, or 50, with just about everyone who knew him. He was that kind of friend.

A big man with a big voice and a big heart, Bill Gonillo was found dead Sunday in his Woodbridge home at the age of 44. It came out of nowhere and stuck like a thunderbolt.

For the past two decades, Gonillo left a fine imprint all over the New Haven and Fairfield county sports landscape, much like Columbo sprinkled his inimitable style all over a crime scene. Bill was thorough, dedicated and lovably dizzy. I have never met anyone with a greater self-deprecating sense of humor than he; and he used it to spread a special friendship to everyone he met.

He once inadvertently showed up to broadcast a Fairfield University football game wearing a Sacred Heart University shirt, an oops that everyone around him roared about for hours. He laughed at his faux pas harder than anyone. How could you help but love the guy?

Yet often at the same Fairfield football game, right in the very midst of his play-by-play, Gonillo would be standing up with that big ol’ television camera on his shoulder taking film of the game for highlights later on Channel 12. He was constantly multi-tasking in that fashion with different events, and how he did it, I don’t know. But he never left anyone feeling shortchanged.

"He never said no when it came to helping anyone out, and he never looked for anything in return," said WFAN’s Bob Heussler, a colleague going back as far as when they both worked at WELI. "He went out of his way for people all the time, and it was never, ever, quid pro quo."

Gonillo’s body of work as a journalist in Connecticut over the past two decades stands on its own merit. He was sports director at the News12 television station in Norwalk for the past 12 years; a fixture on WELI before that; and was play-by-play man for Yale football for a couple of years in the mid-1990s. He was ever-present at the Travelers Greater Hartford Open and Pilot Pen Tennis championships, and almost always was seen lugging that television camera around on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

He was a pro at what he did, but his extraordinary gift was his ability to be a friend. He radiated enviable warmth that was instantly transferred from his first long question to whoever might be the subject of the interview.

Gonillo battled diabetes for many years and, like many of us, liked the buffet line a little too much. But in a profession filled with ego and vanity, every fiber in Gonillo’s body ran counter to the norm.

I suspect Bill probably had a thousand casual acquaintances who felt as close to him as many of us do with our best friends. He treated people with humor, sincerity and instantly put them at ease.

"He was a professional, a colleague and a friend," Fairfield sports information director Jack Jones said. "He came across on the air the same way he dealt with people. He did so many things at once and tried to make everyone happy. And even when he couldn’t, he listened and tried at a later date."

The definition of Bill Gonillo can’t be expressed any better than it was by one of Bill’s closest friends, Joe Linta, who partnered with Gonillo on the Yale broadcasts — and also partnered with him on so many uproarious adventures over the last decade and a half.

"He was one of the few people in my life who genuinely made me laugh and who I genuinely enjoyed being with for the sake of friendship," said Linta, who is now an agent to a cache of NFL players. "You know how, when you go golfing, you forget about all your problems? He was such an enjoyable person that every time I was with him I forgot about all my problems. And I felt I got 100 times the better of the friendship.

"He’s the classic definition of a buddy."

You knew that about Bill Gonillo at an instant.