A Bit O' Blarney Goes a Long Way

Fitzgerald Follows the Bouncing Ball
Special to The Irish American Post
 

Thump, thump-thump, thump.

Jim Fitzgerald's running shoes beat a rhythm on his much-used home treadmill. He's not breathless -- quite yet -- although he's been exercising for at least a half hour. As a space-age concession, he's also draped with a cordless phone, fielding several calls with a cheery "top of the morning." Conversations are polite, to-the-point and decisive. 

Eventually he slows down, hops off the machine and heads upstairs to change into comfortable street clothes. "I feel more comfortable talking business when I'm dressed right," he chuckled before disappearing through the doorway of his Janesville (Wis.) home. Dressed right these days usually means a University of Notre Dame cardigan and casual slacks.

Fitzgerald has certainly earned the right to talk in any type of clothes he wants. After all, he's being inducted into the Wisconsin Business Hall of Fame this spring for his wide-ranging financial interests that include sports teams, cable television systems, investments, motel and shopping center construction and banks.

He already is a honoree in the Wisconsin Sports Hall of Fame for his hard work as an owner building the Milwaukee Bucks into a sports powerhouse in the 1970s and for his co-ownership of Oakland's Golden States Warriors. While with the Bucks, Fitzgerald was also chairman of the National Basketball Association's television committee.

"At that time, we were trying to get the games carried on television. Heck, I can go back to the days when they wouldn't broadcast during prime time and even taped the playoffs for viewing later. That was one of the reasons I got into cable television, to show sports," Fitzgerald explained.

Eventually, the cable empire assembled by Fitzgerald and his partners (many of the them self-proclaimed members of the Irish Mafia living in Janesville, Wis. -- Fitzgerald's hometown) encompassed 50-plus systems around the Midwest and in Florida. They even assisted broadcast tycoon Ted Turner by enrolling thousands of their own viewers with his startup sports cable system.

With his sports adventures behind him, Fitzgerald turned his eyes toward other ventures, including marketing soft spikes for golf shoes in a venture with a son-in-law, Rob O'Loughlin, who is married to his daughter, Marcia. Fitzgerald and O'Loughlin are also considering the marketing of a distance measuring device for golf courses, one that allows golfers to determine the exact length from their tee to the hole.

"The Irish are born with sales skills, they can talk a good story...if you can filter out the blarney. And marketing is where it's at, from my limited experience," he said.
"You know, the bigger the risk, the bigger the rewards," Fitzgerald said. "Obviously, it's worked out for us. It's been a good ride."

Fitzgerald is more than willing to share "the ride" with others. He's noted for his philanthropic largesse, albeit it's subtle and sans limelight. In 1997, he and his wife, Marilyn, donated several million to the University of Notre Dame for its multi-level sports and communications center. The press complex looms over the western rim of the school's 80,232-seat football stadium.

Fr. Monk Molloy, president of Notre Dame. Marilyn and I were having dinner in San Francisco. During our meal - we expressed interest in making a donation to the university. After looking at several options, we agreed to sponsor the construction of the sport and communication center. And, best of all, I get a few season tickets to the games," he said with a broad grin. The media center is more than a mere holding pen for deadline-harried scribes.

Fitzgerald's donation provided an overall increase in square footage almost four times the press facility's venerable original space. The structure now holds 330 football-hungry journalists in its main portion, with three television booths and numerous boxes for dignitaries, alum leaders, school officials and their guests.

Fitzgerald is not one for what he calls "gilding the lily" when it comes to such donations. A small, unobtrusive plaque in the press center's public area is the only marker indicating the family contribution. "In fact, that's the way Mr. Fitzgerald wanted it...low key" said John Heilser, Notre Dame's sports information director.

Fitzgerald's one concession to the high-roller life is regularly chartering a corporate jet to get back and forth to the Notre Dame home games, one of dozens of rabid fans of the Irish Green Machine from around the country who do the same -- their planes packing the South Bend airport tarmac like a paddock of sleek thoroughbreds. Fying out from the Janesville airport, he can take in a mid-afternoon game and be home for supper by early evening. 

"It's where I go for my Irish fix these days," he said.

Fitzgerald's home is crammed with photos, artifacts and mementoes of his sports days and other life milestones. Bookshelves explode with titles such as Celtic Design and Families of Ireland, as well as political treatises, biographies and novels marking the Fitzgerald family's eclectic tastes. His Korean War Navy days, when serving on an aircraft carrier tracking Soviet subs in the North Atlantic, are marked with rows of videos and other books on military themes. Western prints adorn the walls.

After the war, he and a buddy started a service station and oil jobbing business. He also partnered with his father and brother-in-law, Mark and J.P. Cullen, in several building projects. The rest is history...business history.

But it is the Irishness of it all that makes up Fitzgerald's scones and butter. In 1850, his great-grandparents Pat and Mary Fitzgerald emigrated Stateside from Cork. They had one son: Fitzgerald's grandfather Michael who died, however, died when Fitzgerald's dad was only two-and-a-half years old. Apparently that elder Fitzgerald made a bet in a bar that he could lift a barrel of salt off the floor. Something ruptured during the macho display and Michael died of internal bleeding in 1893. Fitzgerald himself was born in 1926, more than three decades after that tragedy.

"It took until my generation before the Irish were fully accepted into the community," he said. "Yet we are highly motivated people. My god, what those people went through," he said of the early émigrés and their struggle to climb the social ladder in the New World. "But we are survivors," he added emphatically.

Fitzgerald has been back to Ireland at least five times. "I really like it there. It's peaceful, friendly," he said. In the mid-1990s, he and Marilyn --his wife of 50 years whom he calls "The Flower of Rock County" -- even took their five children with them on an Auld Sod tour. 

"I drove out of Killarney one misty morning with a couple of friends from Milwaukee, Chuck and Eugenia Jacobus," he remembered from another one of his trips. "We met another driver, a fellow named John Burke, coming in the opposite direction. We couldn't turn around and just hit each other. A couple of Irish farmers came past and pulled our fenders apart," he said.

Marilyn Fitzgerald and Eugenia Jacobus returned to town to find a tow truck, but the mechanics were playing cards at one garage and didn't want to interrupt their game. "'By the time we'd get there,' one observed, 'somebody else would have come along to help,'" Fitzgerald said. 

The Gardai eventually visited the accident scene, surveyed the damage and checked each motorist's name. "'Ah, it's all right,' one policeman said to Burke. ''Fitzgerald,' that's a good Irish name. This an honest man. Now go on with ye,'" Fitzgerald chuckled. He and Burke eventually became pen pals after the Janesvillian helped resolve some insurance problems the Irish motorist had after the accident.

"But after that, I always hired a driver," Fitzgerald said.

When he isn't closing a deal somewhere in the country, attending a corporate board meeting or simply talking about the Gael, Fitzgerald is a confirmed golf enthusiast He loves playing the Irish Course at Whistling Straits golf club in Kohler, Wis., a Pete Dye-designed links. For more mellow moments, he's also a fan of Les Brown, the noted Big Band leader.

The chat concluded, it was time for lunch...where else, of course, but at Roherty's Restaurant and Irish Pub on Janesville's bustling Milton Avenue. The eatery, now in its fourth generation of Rohertys, was opened in 1903...just the place for a guy needing one more touch of "the Irish fix."