Originally published December 20, 2004 on Kentucky Commerce Cabinet News Digest.  

Quiet Man Supported Minorities, High School Basketball Tournament
 
FRANKFORT, Ky., Dec. 20 – Unlike many of today’s brash sports columnists, John McGill was a quiet man who spoke so softly that you sometimes had to lean close to hear him. But for more than five decades, he spoke loudly and clearly with his typewriter (later his computer) on behalf of the commonwealth’s athletes, coaches, and sports issues.

During his years as sports editor of the Ashland Daily Independent, McGill worked tirelessly to promote the Ashland Invitational Tournament into one of the state’s best high school events of its kind. But even more importantly, he championed the cause of African-Americans when that wasn’t such a popular thing to do.

In the early 1960s, when Billy Thompson was named to replace Ed Ashford as sports editor of the Lexington Herald, he hired McGill to be his assistant. They both loved the University of Kentucky, the Cincinnati Reds, and the Boys State High School Basketball Tournament.

Together, Thompson and McGill had an amazing wealth of contacts around the state. Very little happened in Kentucky sports without Thompson or McGill, or both, finding out about it almost immediately.

In 1966, when Thompson left the Herald to become a TV anchor man for Channel 18 in Lexington.           

McGill was promoted to sports editor. He then named yours truly, a senior at Transylvania University, to be his assistant.

McGill was disciplined in both his writing and his decorum around the office. He was an intensely private man, which made him difficult to know, but he was respected for his knowledge of sports, his sources, and his editorial stands.

He was the sort of boss who criticized constructively and privately. He was frugral with his praise, but that made it all the more significant when an employee received a compliment from him.

During his career with the Herald-Leader, McGill three times was honored as Kentucky’s Sportswriter of the Year by the National Association of Sportswriters and Sportscasters.

Of all the young sportswriters who blossomed under his leadership, one of the best was his son, John A. McGill. Starting as a high-school reporter for the Herald, the younger McGill rose to become a sports columnist for the Herald-Leader, a prominent feature writer for the Courier-Journal, and a magazine writer specializing in automobile racing.

The elder McGill was a dapper man, his black hair slicked back and his fashionable clothes always perfectly draped on his thin frame. When involved in conversation, he had a nervous habit of twitching his shoulders.

At press conferences, he was the proverbial fly on the wall, taking in everything but saying little. He had no use for sports columnist or broadcasters who tried to make themselves part of the story.

Invariably, McGill stood up for the underdog and the underprivileged. In the days before integration, he paved the way for all-black high schools to send their basketball teams to play in eastern Kentucky. And he always was a soft touch for an athlete or a coach in need.

After retiring as sports editor of The Herald in the mid-1970s, McGill continued to write a popular question-and-answer column. Always a stickler for accurancy, he was the source to whom his peers turned for the final word on many matters, especially the State High School Basketball Tournament.

He undertook the project of compiling the first comprehensive collection of State Tournament records and facts. That became the foundation for the Kentucky High School Athletic Association database that exists today.

He passed away as he lived. Quietly, away from the spotlight. Like many journalists, he probably took many stories to the grave, because he was a man who could be trusted to keep a secret, which is one reason he had so many sources.
It will be difficult to imagine a State Tournament without John McGill, the quiet man from Olive Hill who became one of Kentucky’s sportswriting legends.