Published: July 03, 2009 11:59 pm      

Furfari remembers long-time fried Ernie Salvatore

Mickey Furfari remembers the first time he met Ernie Salvatore. It was a long time before the duo would start a trek that would see them rise to become two giant sports writing icons in West Virginia.

Salvatore was a rookie reporter with the AP — he wasn’t even covering sports — and Furfari had just finished his freshman year at WVU.

“The AP had an opening for a sports guy, but also someone who could handle the desk five nights a week,” Furfari said Friday. “Ernie was on the news staff there and we got to know each other. He was a rookie from Connecticut and I was a rookie from Morgantown. We became friends.”

That was in 1942.

Salvatore, 87, a sports writing legend at the Huntington Herald Dispatch for nearly 60 years, died Friday at his Huntington home.

“When I think of or hear the name Marshall (University) the first name that comes to mind is Ernie Salvatore,” Furfari said. “I don’t think anyone could have been more supportive of any area than Ernie was to Marshall and the Huntington area. But he was professional. He was always fair and he was good.”

Furfari said the last time he talked to Salvatore was after the WVU-Marshall football game Sept. 8, 2007.

“He had invited me to stay at his house on Friday, maybe even Saturday,” Furfari said. “But I couldn’t be at the game because my oldest brother Mark Anthony had died. But that’s the kind of guy Ernie was. As good a writer as he was, he was a better person.”

Not that the two old-guard scribes didn’t duel, as Salvatore told me when I saw him last, in May at the “Night with the D’Antoni’s” fete in Mullens. He had driven to the event with members of the Herald-Dispatch.

“Me and Mick, we used to go at each other,” Salvatore said. “He’d get on me good for saying something about WVU and I would let him have it when he said something about Marshall. Mick, he had that old Italian temper. About the same as I do almost.”

Furfari laughed at the memory of the dueling scribes.

“He’d be critical of West Virginia so I’d jump on him in a column,” Furfari said. “Then I would do the same thing and he’d reply to me. I remember one time he got so mad that he called me and said, ‘Mickey, let’s cut the crap. I feel like coming up there and beating the (crap) out of you.”

Ah, but they were two of a kind, sports journalism twins.

They were at all the Victory Awards Dinners, dating back to the inception of the event. They ran into each other at WVU-Marshall games.

And then there was the tragic plane crash of 1970.

“WVU had played Syracuse that day and my wife and I had been invited over to a friend’s house,” he said. “Obviously I had to work so I dropped her off. That’s when I heard the news on the radio. I remember pulling off the road and bawled like a baby because I knew people on that plane.”

He thought about his friend in Huntington and called him later that night.

“He said he went bonkers when he heard,” Furfari said. “He jumped in his car and headed straight for the airport. He was one of the first people there. He wrote the initial stories. I know it was tough for him. It was a rough period.”

Still, Salvatore pressed on and became a staple of Huntington breakfasts. He was the conduit between the Marshall teams and its fans, and he knew his craft well.

In 2008 the press box was named in his honor.

He had a role in the 2006 film “We Are Marshall.” His role was played by Mark Oliver.

He wrote over 7,000 columns and some are featured in the 1998 book “Ernie Salvatore’s Sportin’ Life.”

Furfari has been referred to as the Dean of Sportswriters in West Virginia, a moniker he detests.

“If anybody deserves to be called the Dean of Sportswriters in West Virginia, it’s Ernie,”Furfari said. “The guy was a real professional and I am glad Igot the chance to call him a friend.”

Somewhere somebody has a photo of Salvatore, Furfari and retired Charleston Gazette sports writing scribe Bob Baker, taken at the Marshall-WVU game in 1997.

That is a treasure.

They don’t make them like those three anymore.

And that is a shame for our little fraternity.

“You know, I already miss the guy,” Furfari said. “He’s certainly on my mind.”

And those of his legions of readers, who likewise, will miss him.

— E-mail: demorrison@

register-herald.com