t a e r G e Th nicator u m m o C rong t s g n i o is still g ism n i t r a urnal ddy M u o j B n i n r o edia ic strious caree m l a c Lo illu after an EESE LTON R MILIO BY CAR Y RALPH DE YB GRAPH PHOTO
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rom his rental house in Lake Placid, Buddy Martin continued to bang out copy on his clunky Texas Instruments computer whilst play-by-play of the afternoon’s hockey game droned through the AM radio speakers in the background. Next to him sat Bill Madden, a fellow scribe working on his own literature for the next morning’s edition of the New York Daily News. Suddenly, the noise coming through the radio speakers took on a grand new relevance. “Mad Dog, we gotta go to work here!” Martin exclaimed to Madden, who was feverishly completing a feature story on ABC broadcaster Jim McKay. The date was Feb. 22, 1980, and the radio commentator had just announced Mike Eruzione’s goal that gave the Americans a 4-3 lead in the final period of its epic bat-
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tle against the Soviet Union. The stage was set for one of the greatest upsets not just in Olympics history, but in the history of sports, and there was Buddy Martin once again in the right place at the right time. Martin, the Ocala native who had risen to sports editor of one of the country’s great newspapers by this time, shifted gears – it was a mad dash to the arena to catch the game’s final iconic moments and reveal them in the prose that he alone could deliver under such tense deadline pressure. The episode perfectly encapsulated the career and essence of Buddy Martin: knowing where to be, knowing who to bring and recognizing news value in the heat of the moment. It was a career that started like most, with humble origins hidden far from the limelight of large circulations and major league franchises, then took a circuitous route through some
of sports’ most celebrated moments and events and would include many personal peaks and valleys. Along the way the awards would pile up, from excellence in writing and reporting to a Pulitzer nomination and even an Emmy, television’s highest accolade. The most recent honor came in April when Martin’s entire body of work earned him the Wilton F. Martin Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Public Relations Association. Journalism is not just in Buddy Martin’s blood, it’s a chain of his DNA. His grandfather, William Laban Martin, started as a writer at the Ocala Evening Star (forerunner of today’s Ocala Star-Banner) and his father Wilton (yes, the namesake of the lifetime achievement award) worked for the Evening Star, was city editor of the St. Pete Independent and Tampa Times as well as managing editor of the Bradenton Herald. He was also the first public relations director for Silver Springs. The Star-Banner published the sixth-grad-
