Mark Garrow, a 1976 Rutland High School graduate, watched his father and mother work at a breakneck pace seven days a week as they ran Garrow’s Market on State Street in Rutland.
That would not be him, he thought, And then it was.
His own pace was staggering over a career in the motorsports media that spanned more than four decades. He and a friend recently sat down and tried to estimate how many radio shows he had done. They came up with between 11,000 and 12,000.
“I never repeated a show,” Garrow said while back in Rutland for several days this past week.
Other radio show hosts have inserted a past show on a day when they didn’t feel well or ran out of hours.
It’s been years of connecting flights or driving long distances to NASCAR tracks.
His show Garage Pass was carried on hundreds of radio stations across the country and the show had a stint on Cat Country in his hometown of Rutland. Garrow had Cat Country piped into his home in North Carolina. He regarded it as being special that people from back home could access the show.
What now? Garrow recently retired.
Those who know him are certain that retirement will not have a leisurely pace to it.
One component of the retirement phase will be serving as a volleyball official. He has officiated numerous matches already and is working hard to become a Junior USA Volleyball National official.
“I’ve got a long ways to go,” he said. “I have a sickness where I have to keep pushing the limit to find out how good I can be.”
Yes, retirement looks like a full life.
“I am still going to be involved in racing somehow even if it is just to be a race fan where I can go to a race and then go home,” Garrow said. “There are a lot of things I plan to do.”
So there won’t be a definitive end to the race game for Garrow.
But what about the beginning?
You could almost say it began in diapers. He was a baby at Claremont Speedway in New Hampshire where his father Tommy Garrow was a flagman and his mother Marie a serial scorer..
Or was it when he was a college student at Castleton?
His advisor was Keith Jennison, a professor who lived on the main drag in Castleton.
Jennison had Garrow make the short trip over to Devil’s Bowl Speedway in West Haven armed with a cassette to make a demo tape of some of the races.
He went to Jennison’s home to work on a letter that would be enclosed with the demo tape before it was sent to the Daytona Speedway.
“We spent a couple of hours drafting a letter. We talked about telling someone how you know that you can be better,” Garrow said.
He did hear back from the people at Daytona. The feedback was that it sounded pretty good but that he needed more experience.
Garrow’s take: “I thought that it was a polite way of saying, ‘thanks, but no thanks.’”
Ah, but the demo tape still had another destination. When a longtime announcer at Stafford Motor Speedway in Connecticut had some medical issues and had to leave, Daytona forwarded the tape to Stafford.
The Stafford officials invited some candidates to come to the track and audition during races.
Garrow did something very enterprising. Before it was his week to audition, he cruised down to Stafford, sat in the stands and memorized the car numbers to arm himself with a far smoother delivery when it was his turn.
He landed the position and one thing led to another. He had the 40-plus-year career at Performance Racing Network (PRN) as he became one of the heavy hitters in the industry. He had a studio in his home that enabled him to execute both audio and video.
What is amazing, even to Garrow, is how this broadcasting career came out of nowhere. He was not thinking of a radio or TV career in any form when he graduated from Rutland High or during most of his time at Castleton before graduating.
“I didn’t even know if races were broadcast on the radio,” Garrow said.
He was a multiple-time New England Golden Gloves boxing champion and he thought he was at Castleton to possibly pursue a career as a physical education teacher.
Then, he got the nudge from Jennison.
And another from Frank McCormack at radio station WHWB on the West Proctor Road.
“I had never set out to be a radio announcer. It was after a conversation with Frank McCormack that my life took a U-turn,” Garrow said.
“He told me that I had a good voice and that I should think about broadcasting.
“Not for one second before that did I think that is what I was going to do.”
Nudges and encouragement by people like McCormack and then Jennison set things in motion for a long career that would see Garrow become the first recipient of the prestigious Barney Hall Award as well as six National Motorsports Press Association National Broadcaster of the Year accolades.
Recently, Garrow went to Johnny Boys, a popular Rutland breakfast stop, with three other longtime iconic radio figures from the Rutland area — Jack Healey, Mike Cameron and Greg McCormack, Frank’s son.
“We were adding up how many years combined that we had been in broadcasting,” Garrow said.
The number was a big one: 213.
Garrow’s share of it included being there for Richard Petty’s historic 200th victory, all those radio shows and awards and not only the long association with PRN but also doing work for the likes of FOX, ESPN, TNT and TNN.
It was a lot of miles crossing the asphalt of the Fruited Plain and mammoth hours spent in airports.
Yet, no matter where this odyssey took him, there was always Vermont, Frank McCormack, Keith Jennison and Devil’s Bowl. It was and is home. The place where it all began.
LORD TRUCKING
Keith Lord caught the last out of the game for Blue Mountain in the Bucks’ 4-0 state championship victory over South Royalton in 2010.
Fast forward 15 years. He has recently landed a fulltime spotters job for driver Ben Rhodes No. 99 Craftsman truck.
