“I tried to be the eyes and ears of the reader and to convey that in my story the next day. I think that’s lost today…the printed word has been devalued.”

Hank Gola

Veteran Sportswriter & Author
Parsippany, New Jersey

Hank Gola has spent more than four decades as a journalist, covering professional football and golf for the New York Daily News and the New York Post. Hank started his career in New Jersey at The Herald-News of Passaic, and the Daily Record of Morris County, where he covered the Cosmos of the North American Soccer League and the New York Giants of the NFL.

​Hank’s talent as a sportswriter has earned several awards over the years. Most recently, in 2018, he received the coveted Lincoln Werden Award for golf journalism from the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association; an honor he shares with the likes of Jim McKay, Chris Schenkel, Dave Anderson, John Feinstein and George Peper.

Hank has also written three books.  In 1987 he published “Hard Nose with Jim Burt: The Inside Story of the Giants’ 1986 Super Bowl Season… and in 1998 he published a pictorial biography of a young golfer named Tiger Woods. This past November, after nearly 4 years of meticulous research –involving more than 75 personal interviews – Hank published “City of Champions“…a book that tells the story of the people and the drama behind the Garfield High School Boilermakers in their quest to win the national football championship in 1939.

Hank with a few cast members from Garfield High School, which wrote and produced a play based on his “City of Champions” book.

As a native of Garfield, New Jersey, this book was a labor of love for Hank, as well as a very personal tribute to a generation of Americans who embodied this nation’s highest ideals; many of whom eventually gave their lives fighting the tyranny of Hitler.  City of Champions continues to receive critical acclaim, and has been particularly well received within his hometown.

Next month, Hank Will receive the Walter D. Head Award from the Garfield New Jersey Rotary Club in recognition of his book’s rekindling of the town’s pride in an achievement that took place 80 years ago, and that has long provided Garfield with the right to call itself “The City of Champions” – a claim that has remained to this day on the road sign that welcomes visitors into the town.

I’m honored to have Hank as a guest on Golf Yeah, and was particularly pleased to learn in my research that we have two things in common: an interest in Civil War history, and Huckleberry Finn as one of our favorite books.

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