Don Genalo won six nationally televised tournament titles while competing on the Professional Bowlers Tour.
A nice legacy for sure, but he looks closer to home for his three greatest achievements — meeting his wife, Mary, and raising two “amazing” daughters, Anne and Laura.
Having grown up in a bowling family in Long Island, N.Y., Genalo never pictured himself leaving his native East Coast area.
That was until he settled into what he considers an ideal existence in Perrysburg. He lived his dream career for 10 PBA Tour seasons, then found a dream life in the middle of it.
At age 62, life isn’t perfect for Genalo, but then again maybe it is.
After operating a pro shop at Southwyck Lanes and later at Ottawa Lanes from 1989 to 2004, Genalo had to find new ways to make a living when that business dried up along with a decline in the sport he had lived and loved since he was a small boy.
He sold insurance for a while, worked briefly in the funeral planning business and, six years ago, landed a job as a mail carrier with the U.S. Postal Service, delivering in Central Toledo.
It is a steady, reliable job that provides good benefits, great daily exercise, and helps pay the bills. Except for a few run-ins with dogs on his route — including a pair of “pit bulls” that gnawed his knee and hand one day — it is a good fit for Genalo as he approaches retirement years.
He still bowls in the Storm Bowling Toledo Traveling Classic, the area’s best league, and serves as color commentator for televised local bowling events on BCSN. It is his way of staying plugged into the game that shaped his identity
Born Feb. 21, 1958, in Long Island — the youngest of Joe and Lorraine Genalo’s three sons — Don Genalo basically couldn’t avoid being a bowler.
His father, who died when Don was 5, was one of best bowlers in New York and the eastern region, for that matter.
Lorraine, who died when Don was 14, and older sons Joe, now 75, and Larry, 73, were also talented bowlers.
After his mother passed, Don lived with his aunt, Martha Cavola, from age 14 through his time at Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick, N.Y., plus four more years as a half-scholarship bowler at Robert Morris College in Pittsburgh.
Her home remained his occasional home for the first few years after he turned pro in late 1981, an endeavor she disagreed with in her heart, but graciously supported financially.
It turned out to be a wise inverstment.
Genalo won his first two tournament titles in 1983, and the last of his six wins came in 1986. He bowled five more years after the last one, and managed to earn a little less than $700,000 in a 10-year career. Not bad living in the 1980s.
He wonders what it all would have meant had he not been competing in the 1983 PBA National Championship at Imperial Lanes in Toledo.
It was during that tournament, in the lounge after a qualifying block, he met Bowling Green native Mary Whitacre. They hit it off well from the start, maintained a long-distance connection for nearly two years, and eventually married in 1985.
Genalo’s first tour victory came on March 19, 1983, at the King Louie Open in Overland Park, Kan., just a week after he met Mary. His second title came five weeks later in his home area, the Long Island Open in Garden City, N.Y.
“She was good luck right away,” Genalo said.
While many kids never realize the childhood sports dreams, the kid from Long Island lived his for a decade.
“I just loved it,” Genalo said of his affinity for bowling at a young age. “It was something that came naturally to me. When all the kids were dreaming about hitting a home run in the World Series or throwing a pass in the Super Bowl, I was dreaming about beating somebody on television to win a bowling title.”
He watched intently while all-time great bowlers like Earl Anthony, Dick Weber, Don Carter, Dave Davis, Don Johnson, Nelson Burton, Jr., Johnny Petraglia, and Mark Roth — the stars of the late 1960s through the 1980s — battled in the stepladder finals on Saturday afternoons on ABC. He pictured himself on that TV screen competing with them.
Then, one day, just as he had imagined, Genalo was matching shots with some of those earlier icons of the sport, plus more contemporary greats of his era like Walter Ray Williams, Pete Weber, Marshall Holman, Mike Aulby, Norm Duke, Brian Voss, and Parker Bohn III.
After his titles in 1983, Genalo added a victory in the Seattle Open in 1984, a second King Louie Open 1985, and wins at the Lite Beer Championship in Milwaukee and Molson Golden Challenge in Windsor, Ont., both in 1986.
BOWLING FAMILY: “As long as I can remember, both sides of the family bowled,” Genalo said. “My dad was one of the best bowlers in the Brooklyn and Long Island area in the 1940s and ’50s. He passed away in 1963 and, from what I remember of him, we were always going bowling.
“He was the oldest of five kids, and they always bowled together. My brothers, who were much older than me, were always in a bowling center, and my mom was a very good bowler for a while. She had a 160 to 170 average, which was very good. Back then, for a woman, that was considered great.
“I was the baby and, when my mom was working, my brothers would have to watch me. So, I ended up in a bowling center. They’d let me bowl while they were hanging out with their friends. It seemed like a lot of our life centered around being at a bowling alley.”
LONG ISLAND: “I played stickball and basketball outside,” Genalo said of his youth, which also included Little League baseball. “It was a lot busier and a faster-paced life there as opposed to here. That’s one of the reasons I actually fell in love with this area, because it was a little bit slower pace of life.
“People in New York were friendly, but it seemed like they were always in a hurry. In the morning I would go buy a newspaper and there, people didn’t talk much. I came here, and when I’d take a walk to get my newspaper, I’d see a stranger, and they’d say, ‘Hi. How you doing?’
“I was kind of suspicious from my New York background. But I found out that the people here are just more relaxed and friendly. I thought, ‘Man. I really like it here.’ And, I didn’t feel like I had to rush everywhere. Growing up, I never saw myself leaving Long Island. But, I fell in love with this area.”
BEGINNINGS: “I was in my first league when I was 7,” Genalo said. “I don’t know if I thought this at a young age, but I always pictured myself bowling on TV against those [pros].
“When I got into high school and was on all-star teams and the All-Nassau County team, my average was near the top of the list, I’d think ‘Someday I’m going to bowl against those guys on TV.’ It was in high school that I first really got the itch to give it a shot.
MAKING THE GRADE: “I was able to make it because of the type of game I have,” Genalo said. “I tended to throw the ball straighter than a lot of players back then. The straighter players, the ‘strokers,’ were a lot bigger then than they are now. We had a tendency to be more accurate than the ‘crankers,’ who covered a lot of boards hooking the ball a lot more.
“When there’s differences in lane, the more boards you cover, the more those differences are going to be exaggerated. That [straighter shot] helped and, from a personality standpoint, I was always hungry. I didn’t care if you were Earl Anthony or Joe Blow. I was beating you. Obviously I didn’t beat Earl all that much, but that was my mindset.”
UPS AND DOWNS: “I had some [down] moments when I first started,” Genalo said. “In 1981, I bowled the last half of the year and did well enough where I wanted to give it another shot full time. My aunt, Martha Cavola, who raised me after my mom died, agreed to back me and let me give it a shot.
“She did that even though I don’t think she was really in favor of it. She wanted me to come home and get a real job. My aunt also helped put me through college, and she was part owner of a business. I worked for her while I was figuring out what I wanted to do.
“In 1982, I had a stretch where I missed a few qualifying events to get into the tournament. You start having doubts that maybe I shouldn’t be doing this. But I wanted to finish it out a see what would happen. Late in ’82 I made the TV finals in Cleveland, and I was like, ‘Hey, I can do this.’ ”
RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME: Genalo met his future wife in the lounge at Imperial Lanes during the week of the 1983 PBA National Championship in Toledo.
“It’s scary to think of where things might have gone had I not met Mary,” he said. “Being a single guy out on tour, the only thing I definitely knew I wanted to do was bowl. I wasn’t thinking about a relationship.
“But we met there, and fortunately she kept in touch with me and me with her. I wish I hadn’t taken so long to realize how good she was. I should have married her earlier.”
BACK TO EARTH: Many times as pro bowler, the lanes could humble Genalo. Once, it was something else that kept his ego in check.
“I was bowling the Showboat Invitational in Las Vegas, and the locker room was upstairs. I had gotten done bowling and was carrying my equipment up the stairs. There was this little kid who came up and asked me, ‘Hey mister, are you in the book?’
“I said ‘Well, yeh.’ He opened the [PBA program] book and there was Walter Ray Williams’ picture. He thought I was Walter Ray, probably because we were similar in build or whatever. I said, ‘Sorry buddy. That’s not me.’ He said, ‘You’re not him?’ I said, ‘No,’ and he took the book and walked away.”
First Published May 30, 2020, 1:00 p.m.
