Looking back on an exciting career; Retiring Publisher reflects on a life of cars, newspapers, and successes

Greg Zyla, publisher of The Daily Review and the Weekly Group, which includes the Owego and Troy Pennysavers, beamed with pride at his retirement party on June 14. He shook hands with employees that had become friends, and friends that had become like family. Speeches made by staff members showed the respect and adoration they held for Greg. And in turn, Greg thanked everyone present for his or her roles in his successful career.

“When you look back on your life, you have sorrows and things happen, but overall, every day has been an exciting day,” Zyla confided recently in an interview. “I never, ever came to work at a newspaper office and was upset to come in. I always relished the opportunity to be involved in a career that’s exciting.”

And after that long and exciting career in the newspaper industry, Zyla will be retiring as of July 1, and a new General Manager, Dave Barry, will lead The Daily & Sunday Review.

But how was it that Zyla came to the Review and the Times Shamrock Weekly Group? What sparked his interest in newspapers, as well as the cars he loves to write about in his syndicated columns?

Small town beginnings

Zyla was born on July 1, 1949 in Ranshaw, Pa., about one mile from Shamokin, in Coal Township. His father, Michael Zyla, was an advertising salesman for The News Item in Shamokin, and his mother, Dolores, was a full-time mom, but also worked at Woolworth’s.

Zyla loved growing up in Ranshaw, which was a coal mining area. He said he’d sit on the second-floor porch and watch coal miners coming home from work covered in coal soot.

“I didn’t want to have anything to do with coal mining,” Zyla said, adding that his grandfather on his dad’s side died of miners’ asthma at a young age.

The family moved in 1957 to Vineland, N.J., when Michael got a job as an advertising salesperson at The Times Journal.

In Vineland, Zyla began to develop his two interests: racing and newspapers.

“There was a track in Vineland, N.J., where I saw my first race in 1958,” Zyla said with a smile. “This track was way ahead of its time. After school, I lived at that track.”

At home, playing his dad’s drag racing records, as a kid he pretended to be a race announcer.

“I loved cars and I loved racing and everything to do with automotives.”

The sport of racing was just getting started, and Zyla remarked that it was looked on as a hillbilly sport. But the sport grew and evolved.

“I was there with it, growing with it,” Zyla said.

Entering high school at Sacred Heart, Zyla began to develop his other passion: newspapers.

“I knew I was going to be a newspaper guy, looking back at everything I did in high school,” Zyla said. He wrote articles for the sports section of Sacred Heart High School’s newspaper, Vinelandia, and he also sold ads for the publication.

Active duty and higher education

Graduating high school, Zyla enrolled at Cumberland County College, “but it was the Vietnam War era, so I got my draft notice.”

However, Zyla had also put his name in for the Army National Guard, and thanks to a timely call from a fellow car-nut at the Guard, Zyla was sworn into the Guard in the nick of time, spending six years there. He went to active duty in December of 1969 at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, and trained to be a field wireman. While in the Guard, he also sold ads for the Guard’s annual gala program.

When he got out of the Army, Zyla planned to return to Cumberland County College to finish his associate’s degree, however Zyla’s friend, Charles “Chalky” Ottinger, asked if he wanted to attend Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md. with him, to which Greg said yes.

“He picks the phone up, he calls the dean. He says, ‘My best friend just got out of the Army.’ One week later I’m his roommate at Mount St. Mary’s.”

Zyla pursued a major in psychology with a minor in business and marketing. At the same time, he had his own talk/music radio show on WMSM from 7 p.m. to midnight every Wednesday.

“And guess what else I did? I sold ads!” Zyla said. “I was always a natural born salesperson, but I had to believe in what I was selling. It’s always been in me to sell.”

Still a car nut and racing fan, Zyla said he also had a ‘68 Camaro that he used to race, as the sport of drag racing begin to pick up. As Zyla saw the excitement for drag racing build, a long-time idea began to rekindle in his mind.

Vallco Drag Racing Game

For several years, Zyla had been mulling an idea for a drag racing board game. When drag racing really began to take off, Zyla finalized the game, producing it with his family. It was called the Vallco Drag Racing Game, and it came out in 1975, based on the 1974 drag racing season.

The board itself is the drag strip, and each player starts a car at the start line. Players move based on rolls of dice that correspond to certain drag racer’s statistics.

Ads for the game ran in drag racing magazines, and orders started coming in, but didn’t really take off until Woody Hatten, a writer for Super Stock Magazine and a fan of the game, tracked Zyla down for a feature story on the game. Then sales of the game exploded.

“I was even shocked we got so many orders in,” Zyla said. “The game sold originally for $9.95, and it cost probably $4 to $5 to make it. We never made a lot, but what a door it opened.”

Orders still come in for the game, Zyla added. Unfortunately at the time it came out, board games were quickly being pushed aside for the more high-tech video games, such as those provided by Atari.

Working and racing

After graduating from Mount St. Mary’s, Zyla got some additional courses in teaching from Glassboro State College, and taught at a New Jersey youth center for troubled boys for a year. Zyla wanted to get back to his roots, though, and in October of 1973, he got a job at the News Item and Valley Citizen (now known as the Citizen Standard) as a proofreader, making $80 per week.

When, after a little under a month, the papers needed an ad salesperson, “I knew I could do it,” Zyla said. “Luckily John Reid (the publisher) decided to send me out and sell ads, and I performed.”

While working as a salesman, Zyla also began his weekly car column at the Citizen Standard. And he also continued his love of racing. He got his National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) official drag racing license in 1976. Up until that point, most of the other racers just knew him as the announcer for Numidia Dragway or Big Diamond Raceway, or as the drag racing game inventor. In fact, using money from game sales, Zyla was able to buy a 1972 Chevrolet Vega Funny Car body and chassis for $1,800. It had no engine and no transmission, but Zyla and a neighborhood kid, Ron Shurock, along with the help of former drag racer Jack Kulp, fixed up the car to get it ready to race veteran drivers.

“These people in Pennsylvania didn’t know that I came off the street-racing scene in South Jersey,” Zyla said with a smirk. “They didn’t think I could do it; it was a joke.”

By the time the car was ready, there was but four races left at the end of the year, and in Greg’s terms, in the last race of the year he smoked ‘em!

“I won the last race, my first NHRA Super Pro win.”

Zyla married in 1979, and he and his wife at the time, Donna, prepared for the 1980 season of racing at Numidia Dragway. With a full racing season ahead of him, it was time to see what Zyla could really do. He raced and always qualified, making it to nine finals and scoring six wins and three runner-ups.

“I had to race one guy for the championship, and this guy had beaten me every time I ran him. Mark Dennebaum, who still races.”

Both had the same number of wins, and in the final, Mark was racing a dragster with Zyla racing his Funny Car.

“I finally got him!” Zyla beamed. “I just plain beat him. I finally outran this guy. I ended up winning the championship in 1980.”

Alas, the 1981 racing season would never be for Zyla, as his first daughter, Allison, was born in 1981, and he knew he couldn’t hold a job, race, and be a dad. So he sold his championship car, minus the engine and transmission, for $3,200.

“It’s always been my passion and my avocation, my hobby, and when you turn it into your job, its not as fun anymore,” Zyla said about racing. “I’m glad I didn’t ruin my passion and my hobby by making it my full-time job, as I was offered full-time jobs in racing.”

Broadcasting and writing

Shortly after the birth of Allison, Zyla learned that the Motor Racing Network (MRN) was looking for an announcer for the 1981 NASCAR Winston Cup Mountain Dew 500, and was inviting people to send in their demo tapes. Not having a demo tape, Zyla popped in a sound 8mm film of an old Sprint car race, and recorded himself announcing that race. After sending in the tape, MRN decided to give Zyla a shot as the tunnel turn announcer at the race. Despite problems as minor as rainy weather obscuring his view, and as major as a motorcycle gang invading the tower where Zyla was announcing, he got through the race.

While at the Williams Grove Speedway the week after the Mountain Dew 500, a guy came up to him who said he heard him on MRN, and wondered if Zyla would be interested in doing a new TV show broadcast from Williams Grove Speedway.

Of course he was interested.

The show was called Dirt Trackin’, put out by Cable 4 of York, Pa. Zyla did play-by-play calls for the two-hour production. He broadcast from Williams Grove Speedway, Lincoln Speedway, and the Hagerstown Speedway. Soon, other drag racing promoters wanted shows broadcast from their tracks, so Zyla sold them broadcasting packages and added to the number of tracks from which he announced.

Zyla was also a writer, however, and he merged his love of writing with his love of racing often. Beyond writing his columns for the newspapers, Zyla began writing for Super Stock Magazine in 1982.

Aspiring to write for Circle Track Magazine and Peterson Publishing as well, Zyla sent the magazine story after story, getting rejected each time. Finally, thanks to a well-timed submission from Zyla about a winning Sprint car race team, Peterson began to accept Zyla’s submissions and ask for more.

“That’s when Performance Racing Industry saw my name, and that’s when I was recommended as one of the top contributors,” Zyla added. “It all fell into place.”

Writing and publishing

Now, keep in mind through all of this, that Zyla is still maintaining a job at the News-Item and Citizen Standard as an ad rep under ad director Wanda Reid. He worked hard selling ads, and of course he was in charge of all the car accounts.

“Everything was working out well,” Zyla said. “Every day I just loved going out there.”

In 1982, the general manager at the Citizen Standard quit, and publisher John Reid wanted Zyla to take his place. Though Wanda was reluctant to have her star ad rep taken away, she relented, and in December of 1982, Zyla was the new general manager. And he did well at it.

“We went from $42,000 loss that year, to the next year, where we made $42,000.”

With a great staff, they also put out a successful Progress Edition, as Zyla helped turn the paper around.

In 1995, News Item Publisher Phil Yucha told Zyla that he would be retiring in 1999, and Zyla was the guy he wanted to take his spot. Zyla began going through the interview process for the job at the same time his dad was fighting a battle with cancer.

“Right before dad died on Oct. 11, 1999, I remembered him saying, ‘You’re going to get that job. You’re going to do a good job.’”

Zyla did get the job, and he began as the new publisher on Jan. 1, 2000, at the News Item, which had recently become a Times-Shamrock publication.

“The great thing about Times Shamrock is when I met these people, they really are a wonderful family. They really care,” Zyla said.

Coming to Bradford County

Zyla was offered the job of publisher at The Daily & Sunday Review in 2008, as well as the weekly groups, to include the Owego and Troy Pennysaver, and took over the role from George Lynett Jr. on Jan. 1, 2009.

Zyla credits George with a tough re-arranging of the management staff, and said everyone was in place when he got there. He bought a home and settled down in Sayre.

“I get up here, and the first thing that starts happening is we’re going through a horrible recession,” Zyla said. “I hadn’t seen anything like this in my lifetime.”

Luckily for Bradford County, however, the natural gas industry was coming to town. Seeing an opportunity to highlight this new industry, The Review team, under the direction of Zyla, put out the first edition of the Northeast Driller in February of 2010.

“Everyone across the country in the newspaper business, they’re closing, consolidating. It’s nasty. People are losing money. Lo and behold we’re sitting on a gold mine,” Zyla said. “We were living in a cocoon of prosperity, all related to the gas drilling business.”

The monthly Northeast Driller grew from that first, 12-page edition to a high of 64 pages.

“What a huge success,” Zyla said, adding that he’s always been up for trying new ideas. “With the Driller, it was a slam dunk.”

Retiring, but not stopping

Recently Zyla decided it was time to retire, as he’s worked hard his whole life, and he’d like to spend more time with his family.

“I may be retiring, but I’m never going to be retired,” said Zyla. He will continue writing his weekly Test Drive, Car Collector Corner and Cars We Remember columns, which run in about 450 newspapers each week through Gatehouse Media, Times-Shamrock newspapers, and Zyla’s own little syndicate of 28 newspapers.

He’ll also continue to do monthly interviews for Performance Racing Industry magazine, which he has done since 1986. And he’ll continue living in Sayre.

“I was always small town America. That’s me,” he said. “And I like to get involved in the community.”

Zyla has been on the advisory board of the Salvation Army, between Shamokin and Sayre, for about 15 years. On July 1, he’ll be the chairman of the Sayre Salvation Army for the next two years.

“I want to give a little more time now to the community activities.”

Religion is also very important to Zyla. He was born a Catholic and puts God in the center of his life, he said.

Once retired, Zyla looks forward to spending more time with his family. He has three children: 33-year-old Allison, a Susquehanna University graduate who lives in Harrisburg and is a top sales representative for Actavis Pharmaceuticals; 30-year-old Trisha, a Manhattan Fashion Institute of Technology graduate who lives in Carlisle, Pa. and has a management position with Rite Aid; and 25-year-old Tim, who follows Zyla’s footsteps not only in writing as a staff writer for The Daily & Sunday Review, but also in racing, as he’s won two Pro championships at Skyview Drags in a 1970 Camaro race car Zyla owns.

And then there’s his mother, still active at age 92 and still able to beat Zyla in scrabble regularly. “I’m blessed to have my wonderful mom still with me.”

“I’m really proud of my family,” Zyla said.

From the time Zyla first got involved with the newspaper industry to now, things have evolved and changed a lot.

“It has changed to the point where I’m hoping that one day, we will look at it as a real premium to a person’s life to be able to get a printed issue of a newspaper and it will be valued for what it really is, because we pay for the community, trustworthy news,” he said.

He believes emphasizing local news in newspapers is important to their success.

“If you are not mega-local today, and you don’t buy into the importance of giving the community the community news, I think you will fail.”

Throughout his career, Zyla has been honored and awarded, receiving such prestigious awards as the Frank Blunk New York Times award by the Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) in 1997, and the Bill Simmons Philadelphia Inquirer Memorial Award by EMPA 1988, among many others. However, when asked what his greatest accomplishment was, he smiled. It was an easy question. The answer was seeing his staff succeed.

“To see them succeed, there’s nothing better,” he said. “My success is directly related to seeing the success of so many throughout my life. That’s my greatest joy in working, is seeing my workers succeed.”

On behalf of the staff at the weekly group, best wishes are extended to Zyla, as he will surely be missed. God Speed, Greg Zyla.

To view a video containing photos of Zyla’s activities and work within the community, and a background song by his favorite band, The Beach Boys, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6jg6ru2AP0.