Bob Gill, Broadcast Executive Driven By Quest For Knowledge

When African-American broadcasting pioneer Bob Gill made up his mind to learn or do something, nothing stopped him.

Like the time he wanted to learn karate, and did - in order to think and move more beautifully.

Or the time he wanted to take up Japanese, and did - well enough to converse two weeks later with a Japanese couple at a nearby table in a restaurant.

Once he'd decided to learn to fly, he did - collecting licenses for fixed-wing craft and helicopters like other folks collect stamps.

And there was the time he heard a Wayne State University counselor tell him he shouldn't major in radio speech because black people couldn't get radio jobs.

Mr. Gill's reaction: "Oh, yeah?"

Still learning at 70, Mr. Gill died of a heart attack March 9.

Said his brother Elmer Gill, a professional pianist in Surrey, British Columbia: "Our parents and grandmother taught us we could do anything we wanted. We learned to sew on buttons, iron, cook. Grandmother said, `Be prepared, learn as much as you can so if you have a chance to do something, you can do it.'

"Bob kept learning. He learned some new skill almost every year."

Growing up in Indianapolis, Mr. Gill was involved in the student council and school newspaper. He also was a fair violinist - so much so that when his teacher at the Cosmopolitan School of Music died, she willed him her rare violin.

When Mr. Gill interrupted his college studies to join the U.S.

Army, serving in Europe during World War II, he sent his violin to New York for safekeeping with the mother of a college chum. The violin was lost. He could not trace it after the war, and never played again.

Back at Indiana State, he went on with his radio studies, eventually becoming "the nation's first black disc jockey on a network-owned station, WIRE, in Indianapolis," said his brother.

Mr. Gill moved to Seattle in the early 1950s, and became a teacher of crafts and mechanical drawing at Ballard High School and what was then Denny Junior High School - as well as a school administrator in Ballard for 17 years.

But he had always wanted to learn to ski. So his second day here he bought a pair of skis. Two years later, he was the nation's first black certified ski-instructor, according to his brother.

In the late 1960s he worked for KING and KOMO. He went to KIRO-TV in the 1970s, where he became director of minority affairs and developed the award-winning commentary show "Dialog."

Soon he was promoted to vice president of KIRO Broadcasting, then made a vice president of Bonneville International Corp., KIRO's parent company.

He also drove a motorcycle, occasionally on joint outings with KIRO executive Lloyd Cooney.

"He was a very `got-it-together' person," Cooney said, "with high self-esteem, considering he could handle the discrimination he had to endure early in life.

"He also had a great relationship with his family, and gained a positive philosophy and other things from them. Like home remedies. He ate whole garlic and never had colds. Or he'd mix cornmeal and Tide together, and it was the greatest hand cleaner invented."

Private services for Mr. Gill were held March 12 at Columbia Funeral Home.