Forever a Mountaineer
September 26, 2011 02:00 PM | General
This story ran in Mountaineer Illustrated on Saturday, Sept. 24 during the LSU game as part of West Virginia University's tribute to Mike Puskar for his unyielding support through the years. Puskar died Friday evening following a lengthy battle with cancer.
Ed Pastilong had just been named athletic director at West Virginia University, succeeding the popular and well-respected Fred Schaus. The football team was coming off their first-ever national championship game appearance against Notre Dame in the 1989 Fiesta Bowl and by that time, Don Nehlen had developed Mountaineer football into a consistent winner with crowds regularly exceeding 50,000 at Mountaineer Field.
The men's basketball program was also humming along under veteran coach Gale Catlett after narrowly losing to Duke in a bitterly contested 1989 NCAA tournament second-round game in Greensboro, N.C. It was Catlett's sixth NCAA appearance in eight years - the school's best post-season run since its Golden Era of basketball in the late 1950s. Catlett's program, too, had become a constant revenue producer for the athletic department.
It appeared WVU athletics was awash in cash. Just turn on the spigot and out flowed the money.
But storm clouds were brewing, and Pastilong knew full well that difficult times were ahead for the athletic department. Major Harris, West Virginia's brilliant quarterback, was not going to be around forever to keep the turnstiles spinning, and even more ominously, Penn State had cast its eyes westward, eventually giving up its independent status to join the Big Ten Conference. Penn State's decision to leave Eastern football started a seismic shift that would dramatically alter the landscape of college athletics for many years to come (and is still happening today).
In the meantime, Title IX, first enacted in 1972, required that any institution receiving federal assistance must not discriminate on the basis of gender, forcing athletic departments across the country to fund equal scholarship opportunities for women. In the late 1980s, West Virginia was among the many schools playing catch-up to become compliant.
Before Pastilong became athletic director, one of his many roles with the athletic department in the late 1970s and early 1980s was managing the annual scholarship fund, which was essentially a series of fundraising dinners held throughout the state in the spring to raise money for the sports program. In a good year those scholarship dinners would typically bring in a couple hundred thousand dollars - a substantial sum of money - but not nearly enough to fuel the rising costs of running a major college athletic program. In those years the department always seemed to struggle just to balance its books.
But by the time of Schaus' retirement in summer of 1989, the athletic department had finally become financially stable enough to enable the University to revoke its athletic scholarship tuition waivers, which amounted to about $3 million annually, or roughly one-fourth of its annual athletic budget. Adjusted for inflation, $3 million in 1989 is the equivalent to about $16 million in today's dollars - a big, big slice of the pie.
Pastilong was concerned that the loss of tuition waivers was going to become an anchor around the department's neck, so he began seeking creative ways to make up the difference. One afternoon he came across an article in one of the trade magazines sitting on his desk about the USC football program endowing football scholarships for its position players. Intrigued by the idea, Pastilong called up an old buddy he had first met at a dinner meeting at the Holiday Inn many years before to run the idea by him.
Pastilong’s old buddy happened to be a fella named Mike Puskar, and he liked the idea, too.
***
Milan Puskar's up-from-the-bootstraps rise from a small businessman to one of the world's preeminent pharmaceutical makers is a tale right out of a Horatio Alger novel. In 1961, fresh out of Youngstown State College, Puskar and his Army buddy Don Panoz started Mylan Pharmaceuticals in White Sulphur Springs. Their laboratory was the basement of Puskar’s rented apartment.
"When he first started that company down in White Sulphur Springs I think he was selling pharmaceuticals out of a station wagon," Nehlen chuckled. "Well, they decided to move their business to Morgantown, and thank goodness they did."
"There were setbacks, but they kept going and a gentleman by the name of Roy McKnight teamed up with them," recalled Pastilong. "They became good friends and were remarkable businessmen, and they transformed Mylan into the largest generic pharmaceutical company in the world."
By the late 1980s, Mylan had benefited from massive federal deregulation initiated by the Reagan administration and that's when the company decided to concentrate on the generic drug industry - a wise and extremely profitable choice.
"He just has a sixth-sense for success," marveled Pastilong of Puskar.
Pastilong is not sure exactly when Puskar became a huge Mountaineer supporter, but he suspects longtime Morgantown businessman Jack Hines had something to do with it, and by the time Ed was sitting in the AD chair, Puskar had the financial means to help out the athletic program.
"I can remember driving back from Charleston and getting a phone call from Mike asking me to stop by his office," Pastilong said. "He indicated that he really liked the concept of endowing scholarships and he wanted to kick it off with a $1 million contribution."
After many consultations, the decision was made to start the endowments at $50,000 per scholarship, so right off the bat Puskar had personally funded 20 of them. Pastilong also wisely chose to open the endowed scholarship program to all sports, making it a department-wide initiative in order to attract a wider scope of benefactors.
"Mike's contribution gave the program so much momentum that today we have roughly $31 million in the Athletic Endowment Fund," Pastilong said. "The interest from that fund pays for our scholarships. Between our seating priority program in the Mountaineer Athletic Club and the Athletic Endowment Fund, that has allowed us to fully fund all women's scholarships, as well as all men's scholarships today."
Pastilong believes Puskar's initial gift to the Athletic Endowment Fund helped give the department the means to move beyond just scrounging around to pay its bills on a yearly basis to becoming a unit that could finally do some long-range planning – a luxury never afforded previous ADs.
"At the end of the day, the first bill we had to pay was our scholarship bill and the better your scholarship program is the better your program is," Pastilong noted.
In 2003, Puskar once again came to the rescue when the athletic department was experiencing more stormy weather. The BIG EAST Conference had just fractured, three of its top football programs Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech opting to join the Atlantic Coast Conference and the league encountering the most uncertain period in its history.
It was at this time that Puskar decided to give the single largest gift in West Virginia University history - $20 million, of which $14.5 million went to athletics.
"We have always prided ourselves in being in the black, watching our expenditures and making sure that we always had adequate revenue, and at this particular point in time we were advancing rapidly," Pastilong recalled. "One day I got a call from Mike and he asked me to come over to his office and he told me he was going to make a contribution to West Virginia University for $20 million, of which the major portion of that was going toward athletics.
"He said, 'I would like you to give me some direction as to how you would like the athletic portion distributed,'" Pastilong said.
Again, the two decided the Athletic Endowment Fund was where the bulk of the money should go. Puskar wisely understood that this would benefit thousands of athletes from all walks of life well into the future. The rest of the athletic portion of his gift went to complete the suite construction at the football stadium.
"That allowed us to be a Top 25 program - and it will allow us to continue to be a Top 25 program," Pastilong predicted.
Twice, West Virginia University showed its appreciation for Puskar by having facilities named after him - first the Milan Puskar Center where the football complex is located and later Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium. On both occasions, Puskar was extremely reluctant to participate.
"When we briefed Mike that we were doing this that was the last thing he was interested in," Pastilong laughed. "Actually, we informed him both times."
"Mike does not want the bright lights," Nehlen added. "That's just not his nature."
And Puskar's generosity has extended well beyond West Virginia University. With the exception of perhaps Hazel Ruby McQuain, there is no name more associated with philanthropy in this area than Mike Puskar, his contributions aiding all walks of life.
"There are so many things he has done that nobody knows about that are probably more important than the big things that everybody knows about," said Nehlen.
“If you’ve worked, studied or played in Morgantown, Mike Puskar has touched your life,” added Bob Pirner, Director of Development for Pace Enterprises.
The company Puskar first started in White Sulphur Springs, and later moved to Morgantown, today offers the most coveted jobs in the area because of Puskar's personal philosophy of rewarding excellence.
"He always felt the company was only as good as its employees," Pastilong said. "He surrounded himself with extremely hard-working, intelligent, and talented administrators and he made sure each and every employee knew that they were just as important to the company's success as he was."
"The reason he is so successful is because he knows how to treat people," explained Nehlen. "If you make people feel important, and you make people feel special, and make them feel like they are a part of a winning team, they are going to bust their back for you. Mike brought that company along because that's the way he treated his employees, and he got the best out of them."
Pirner recalled the time Puskar was introduced at the groundbreaking ceremony for Mylan Park several years ago. The person reading Puskar’s biography made reference “to the 1,200 workers employed at Mylan …” and when Mike reached the rostrum, he politely pointed out that 1,238 people were working at his company. Puskar wanted to make sure each and every Mylan employee was accounted for.
Prior to the LSU football game, West Virginia University recognized not only Mike Puskar's generosity to his adopted school, but the generosity he has displayed through the years to his adopted community and his adopted state. The countless lives he has touched will continue to benefit from his generosity for many years to come.
One of them just happens to be my son, who spends two days a week each summer at the magnificent, state-of-the-art SteppingStones facility located at sprawling, 320-acre Mylan Park - one of the largest recreational and educational venues in the state accommodating several thousand people per year. Puskar’s initial contribution helped make this entire complex a reality.
"Morgantown wouldn't be half the place it is today without Mike Puskar," said Nehlen.
This grateful father couldn't agree more.
West Virginia University tribute video
Ed Pastilong had just been named athletic director at West Virginia University, succeeding the popular and well-respected Fred Schaus. The football team was coming off their first-ever national championship game appearance against Notre Dame in the 1989 Fiesta Bowl and by that time, Don Nehlen had developed Mountaineer football into a consistent winner with crowds regularly exceeding 50,000 at Mountaineer Field.
The men's basketball program was also humming along under veteran coach Gale Catlett after narrowly losing to Duke in a bitterly contested 1989 NCAA tournament second-round game in Greensboro, N.C. It was Catlett's sixth NCAA appearance in eight years - the school's best post-season run since its Golden Era of basketball in the late 1950s. Catlett's program, too, had become a constant revenue producer for the athletic department.
It appeared WVU athletics was awash in cash. Just turn on the spigot and out flowed the money.
But storm clouds were brewing, and Pastilong knew full well that difficult times were ahead for the athletic department. Major Harris, West Virginia's brilliant quarterback, was not going to be around forever to keep the turnstiles spinning, and even more ominously, Penn State had cast its eyes westward, eventually giving up its independent status to join the Big Ten Conference. Penn State's decision to leave Eastern football started a seismic shift that would dramatically alter the landscape of college athletics for many years to come (and is still happening today).
In the meantime, Title IX, first enacted in 1972, required that any institution receiving federal assistance must not discriminate on the basis of gender, forcing athletic departments across the country to fund equal scholarship opportunities for women. In the late 1980s, West Virginia was among the many schools playing catch-up to become compliant.
Before Pastilong became athletic director, one of his many roles with the athletic department in the late 1970s and early 1980s was managing the annual scholarship fund, which was essentially a series of fundraising dinners held throughout the state in the spring to raise money for the sports program. In a good year those scholarship dinners would typically bring in a couple hundred thousand dollars - a substantial sum of money - but not nearly enough to fuel the rising costs of running a major college athletic program. In those years the department always seemed to struggle just to balance its books.
But by the time of Schaus' retirement in summer of 1989, the athletic department had finally become financially stable enough to enable the University to revoke its athletic scholarship tuition waivers, which amounted to about $3 million annually, or roughly one-fourth of its annual athletic budget. Adjusted for inflation, $3 million in 1989 is the equivalent to about $16 million in today's dollars - a big, big slice of the pie.
Pastilong was concerned that the loss of tuition waivers was going to become an anchor around the department's neck, so he began seeking creative ways to make up the difference. One afternoon he came across an article in one of the trade magazines sitting on his desk about the USC football program endowing football scholarships for its position players. Intrigued by the idea, Pastilong called up an old buddy he had first met at a dinner meeting at the Holiday Inn many years before to run the idea by him.
Pastilong’s old buddy happened to be a fella named Mike Puskar, and he liked the idea, too.
Milan Puskar's up-from-the-bootstraps rise from a small businessman to one of the world's preeminent pharmaceutical makers is a tale right out of a Horatio Alger novel. In 1961, fresh out of Youngstown State College, Puskar and his Army buddy Don Panoz started Mylan Pharmaceuticals in White Sulphur Springs. Their laboratory was the basement of Puskar’s rented apartment.
"When he first started that company down in White Sulphur Springs I think he was selling pharmaceuticals out of a station wagon," Nehlen chuckled. "Well, they decided to move their business to Morgantown, and thank goodness they did."
"There were setbacks, but they kept going and a gentleman by the name of Roy McKnight teamed up with them," recalled Pastilong. "They became good friends and were remarkable businessmen, and they transformed Mylan into the largest generic pharmaceutical company in the world."
By the late 1980s, Mylan had benefited from massive federal deregulation initiated by the Reagan administration and that's when the company decided to concentrate on the generic drug industry - a wise and extremely profitable choice.
"He just has a sixth-sense for success," marveled Pastilong of Puskar.
Pastilong is not sure exactly when Puskar became a huge Mountaineer supporter, but he suspects longtime Morgantown businessman Jack Hines had something to do with it, and by the time Ed was sitting in the AD chair, Puskar had the financial means to help out the athletic program.
"I can remember driving back from Charleston and getting a phone call from Mike asking me to stop by his office," Pastilong said. "He indicated that he really liked the concept of endowing scholarships and he wanted to kick it off with a $1 million contribution."
After many consultations, the decision was made to start the endowments at $50,000 per scholarship, so right off the bat Puskar had personally funded 20 of them. Pastilong also wisely chose to open the endowed scholarship program to all sports, making it a department-wide initiative in order to attract a wider scope of benefactors.
"Mike's contribution gave the program so much momentum that today we have roughly $31 million in the Athletic Endowment Fund," Pastilong said. "The interest from that fund pays for our scholarships. Between our seating priority program in the Mountaineer Athletic Club and the Athletic Endowment Fund, that has allowed us to fully fund all women's scholarships, as well as all men's scholarships today."
Pastilong believes Puskar's initial gift to the Athletic Endowment Fund helped give the department the means to move beyond just scrounging around to pay its bills on a yearly basis to becoming a unit that could finally do some long-range planning – a luxury never afforded previous ADs.
"At the end of the day, the first bill we had to pay was our scholarship bill and the better your scholarship program is the better your program is," Pastilong noted.
In 2003, Puskar once again came to the rescue when the athletic department was experiencing more stormy weather. The BIG EAST Conference had just fractured, three of its top football programs Miami, Boston College and Virginia Tech opting to join the Atlantic Coast Conference and the league encountering the most uncertain period in its history.
It was at this time that Puskar decided to give the single largest gift in West Virginia University history - $20 million, of which $14.5 million went to athletics.
"We have always prided ourselves in being in the black, watching our expenditures and making sure that we always had adequate revenue, and at this particular point in time we were advancing rapidly," Pastilong recalled. "One day I got a call from Mike and he asked me to come over to his office and he told me he was going to make a contribution to West Virginia University for $20 million, of which the major portion of that was going toward athletics.
"He said, 'I would like you to give me some direction as to how you would like the athletic portion distributed,'" Pastilong said.
Again, the two decided the Athletic Endowment Fund was where the bulk of the money should go. Puskar wisely understood that this would benefit thousands of athletes from all walks of life well into the future. The rest of the athletic portion of his gift went to complete the suite construction at the football stadium.
"That allowed us to be a Top 25 program - and it will allow us to continue to be a Top 25 program," Pastilong predicted.
Twice, West Virginia University showed its appreciation for Puskar by having facilities named after him - first the Milan Puskar Center where the football complex is located and later Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium. On both occasions, Puskar was extremely reluctant to participate.
"When we briefed Mike that we were doing this that was the last thing he was interested in," Pastilong laughed. "Actually, we informed him both times."
"Mike does not want the bright lights," Nehlen added. "That's just not his nature."
And Puskar's generosity has extended well beyond West Virginia University. With the exception of perhaps Hazel Ruby McQuain, there is no name more associated with philanthropy in this area than Mike Puskar, his contributions aiding all walks of life.
"There are so many things he has done that nobody knows about that are probably more important than the big things that everybody knows about," said Nehlen.
“If you’ve worked, studied or played in Morgantown, Mike Puskar has touched your life,” added Bob Pirner, Director of Development for Pace Enterprises.
The company Puskar first started in White Sulphur Springs, and later moved to Morgantown, today offers the most coveted jobs in the area because of Puskar's personal philosophy of rewarding excellence.
"He always felt the company was only as good as its employees," Pastilong said. "He surrounded himself with extremely hard-working, intelligent, and talented administrators and he made sure each and every employee knew that they were just as important to the company's success as he was."
"The reason he is so successful is because he knows how to treat people," explained Nehlen. "If you make people feel important, and you make people feel special, and make them feel like they are a part of a winning team, they are going to bust their back for you. Mike brought that company along because that's the way he treated his employees, and he got the best out of them."
Pirner recalled the time Puskar was introduced at the groundbreaking ceremony for Mylan Park several years ago. The person reading Puskar’s biography made reference “to the 1,200 workers employed at Mylan …” and when Mike reached the rostrum, he politely pointed out that 1,238 people were working at his company. Puskar wanted to make sure each and every Mylan employee was accounted for.
Prior to the LSU football game, West Virginia University recognized not only Mike Puskar's generosity to his adopted school, but the generosity he has displayed through the years to his adopted community and his adopted state. The countless lives he has touched will continue to benefit from his generosity for many years to come.
One of them just happens to be my son, who spends two days a week each summer at the magnificent, state-of-the-art SteppingStones facility located at sprawling, 320-acre Mylan Park - one of the largest recreational and educational venues in the state accommodating several thousand people per year. Puskar’s initial contribution helped make this entire complex a reality.
"Morgantown wouldn't be half the place it is today without Mike Puskar," said Nehlen.
This grateful father couldn't agree more.
West Virginia University tribute video
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