Sports writer Ronnie Gallagher wore a big smile as he wrote that line about the doors of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame finally opening to everyone in last Friday’s special section that welcomed winners to the 42nd annual convention.
“It was a year ago,” he wrote, “that these fingers typed this message to all Salisbury Post readers.
“ ‘Your fantasy is about to begin, sports fans.’ ”
“Yep, that’s what these fingers typed.”
But the fantasy turned out to be just that, he wrote.
A fantasy.
The Hall of Fame didn’t open last year.
But this year?
Last week his fingers typed those words again, and it did open — “a glittering masterpiece that honors the greatest people we’ve ever read and the greatest voices we’ve ever listened to.”
And it will continue to be open on weekends and, eventually, daily.
But Ronnie’s smile would have been much bigger if he’d known that the fantasy that was finally coming true — originally envisioned by two Salisbury surgeons — had been born long before he came to the Post — and that more than a decade ago other fingers had typed similar words.
The former N.C. Federal Savings and Loan building that had been on the corner of East Innes and North Long, the Post reported, would be reopened as an NSSA museum by the spring of 1992.
That date became the goal in 1990 when Dr. Bill Mason was president of NSSA and the building was bought. And it was reiterated a year later when he retrieved our statue — that 23-foot tall, bigger-than-life sculpture of two soaring eagles that we’d all watched guard the bank on Innes Street for decades.
They’d been moved to the Charlotte Motor Speedway about the time NSSA bought the bank, and at least a hundred people had asked Bill if we were going to get them back.
Speedway officials were so agreeable — they’d never found a proper spot for the eagles down there — that they gave them back and moved them here.
Local architects Anne and the late Doug Tennent donated a design for a new base for them, and more gifts poured in. Benny Drew donated his work laying the stone, and by the time the eagles were home again, more than 35 people — lawyers, plumbers, electricians and even some who mowed the grass — had donated labor.
But the excitement of developing a Hall of Fame that would let sports fans see Babe Ruth hit a home run and Joe DiMaggio kicking up the dirt, as well as a great Daytona race, had started when Bill Mason grew up in Canton, Ohio, where the Football Hall of Fame opened while he was in college.
He was introduced to the NSSA program within a year after he began practicing medicine in Salisbury in the mid-1970s.
“Someone asked me to be a host,” he remembers, “and I asked what a host was.”
Being a host meant paying $100 and entertaining an out-of-state writer or broadcaster being honored at the annual meeting.
Bill drew a young sportswriter from Meridian, Miss., where he’d spent two years as a naval flight surgeon — and read what the sportswriter wrote.
And they had a great time.
Later he rode to a medical meeting with Dr. Ed McKenzie, a longtime Salisbury surgeon who is now retired and living in Statesville. McKenzie has always been a visionary, full of ideas — and was one of the founders of NSSA.
“He got me interested,” Bill says.
And he couldn’t get Canton out of his mind.
“People would say, ‘Where’s Canton?’ and we’d say, ‘Well, it’s 60 miles south of Cleveland.’
“But when the Football Hall of Fame opened, nobody asked where Canton was anymore, and that’s what I envisioned here. You could use all the sports. Sports are made better by broadcasting and writing.”
He remembers watching a game that was broadcast without a broadcaster’s play-by-play. It was an experiment by the networks at the request of viewers.
“And it was boring,” he says. And never done again.
And the writers?
“Probably a great percentage of our country,” he says, “picks up the newspaper, looks at the front page and then turns to the sports page.”
He believed then (and still believes) that sports is part of our national pastime, that sportscasters make it more exciting and that sportswriters are excellent writers — and both should be honored.
NSSA’s Hall of Fame had to have a home.
Here.
So he began the search that led to buying the bank, bringing the eagles home, working with a designer to develop a museum that would make the hall not just a place of plaques and busts but a place to learn and have fun.
By 1991 organizers had gotten rights from the National Football League to use their highlights — for nothing instead of the usual $75,000.
And the opening reception and dedication in 1991 took place in the building so everyone could share the fantasy and envision the next year, when it would contain not only memorabilia but also monitors and projectors, when it would be a place where visitors could relive the greatest moments in sports history.
Except it didn’t open in 1992. Or 1993. Or last year.
But it is open now.
And Ronnie Gallagher, who had always wondered about that “curious building with the sign out front — but the doors locked out back,” has gone through the unlocked doors and seen the fantasy live.
He was wide-eyed and awestruck at exhibits for all sports where visitors can push a button and get a great moment. He knows the opening Friday was a great event for the weekend’s visitors.
And so does Bill Mason.
“I’m so thrilled,” he says.
Back in 1991, big supporters were people like Tom Smith, president of Food Lion, and Coca-Cola.
“The president of Coca-Cola was here when it was dedicated,” Bill says, “and it was a real project for a lot of people who would have loved to have had it open years ago, but we just ran out of money.”
And he had to drop out because of the push of his practice.
“It’s almost a full-time job,” he says, “but Claude Hampton got interested and took over.” And he couldn’t be happier with what Hampton and those who have worked with him have done.
“It’s absolutely a dream come true,” Bill says. “When I walked in last year and saw those things, I had tears in my eyes. It’s a great draw for Salisbury. And with the Transportation Museum, I think it’s going to be wonderful.”
Ronnie Gallagher agrees.
“It’s going to join the Transportation Museum in Spencer,” he wrote, “as an out-of-towner’s delight. Sports fans will drive up I-85, see the NSSA sign, become curious and say, ‘Honey, let’s pull off and check this out ... ’
“And once they’re in?
“Their sports fantasy awaits,” he wrote.
“Finally.”
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