Island Profile — Bill McGorry:  Friends, family and Shelter Island

In June 1969, Bill McGorry, a 30-year-old ad salesman from Bayside, Queens came to Shelter Island — a place he never knew existed — at the invitation of a friend. He’ll never forget that first visit with his wife, two toddlers and a newborn.

That weekend, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, and the McGorry family began a relationship with Shelter Island just as revelatory.

Bill is Chairman of the Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame. He was inducted himself into the 2024 Hall of Fame a few weeks ago. His long and illustrious career as publisher of trade magazines for television, cable, books and other media started in the mailroom of the General Motors Building at 57th and Broadway, where his future wife, Phyllis, was working on the 34th floor as a secretary.

From the beginning, the McGorrys’ relationship with Shelter Island was inextricably linked to the friends he made here. It was Bill’s good friend from the Sacred Heart Parish, Buzz O’Rourke, who invited the family out. At the time of the Shelter Island clambake, Mr. O’Rourke was running for District Leader in Bayside, an election he subsequently won.

John Roe, whose family owned Westmoreland Farm, offered to rent part of the caretaker’s cottage to the McGorrys. “We wound up renting that place for almost 10 years. Our kids grew up there,” Bill said. “Across the road was Hugh Carey [New York’s governor from 1975-1982] and his kids.” 

In those idyllic summers, neighbors never locked their doors, and the flow of children from house to house was so fluid that Phyllis McGorry was once stopped by the governor’s security detail when she came to fetch her own children home for dinner, and one of the Careys’ children came along.

Bill grew up in Bayside, the oldest of eight children, and went to St. Helena’s, a Catholic High School in the Bronx, where his tuition was $10 a month. He served in the Marine Corps from 1960 to 1965, and got a BS  and an MBA from St. John’s University. Much of his higher education took place in night school while working full time and serving in the Reserves.

Although he started out at GM in the mailroom, he quickly became a field rep, which meant collecting past due payments from car owners, and on occasion, repossessing a car.

“I was a repo man in Newburgh, N.Y.,” Bill recalled. “Then I accepted a transfer, and I was repossessing cars in Harlem. Mostly it was like stealing them.”

During the 1964 Harlem riots, Bill was working with a client, Royal Buick in Harlem, to collect from “skips” — overdue customers who had dropped out of sight.

“We’d carry with us the detail on the car, the plate numbers, the car keys. One night when I was driving home to Queens, I made a turn through Harlem and bingo, here is this Buick and it belonged to one of these guys. I parked my car, jumped in, started the car and drove it to the garage. Then I had to go back and report it to the police station. I walked into the precinct, and the cops were there in bulletproof vests and helmets. I went up to the desk and said, ‘Bill McGorry, with GMAC, I just repossessed a car.’ The policeman at the desk yelled, ‘Repo? The war is over! If they are back to repossessing cars, it’s over.’”

Over the years, Bill spent a lot of time with politicians and was encouraged by friends to get more involved in political life, but he learned young that he didn’t enjoy politics. “I did a brief stint in Albany as a legislative assistant to a state senator and I thought, this is not for me,” he said, “I have a family with six children to support.”

Still, the McGorrys always enjoyed the company of politicians. After their daughter Amy moved to Annapolis, Md., the McGorrys became friendly with the O’Malley clan there through their daughter, and their grandson’s soccer team, when Martin O’Malley had just been elected the governor of Maryland and he and his family moved to Annapolis and signed their son up to play. 

In 1993, Bill was running a broadcasting and cable trade publishing group for Cahners when he launched the Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the most enduring legacy of his media career. At first, the Hall of Fame served to bring the businesses of network broadcasting and cable together.

“The challenge was taking broadcasting and introducing cable,” Bill said. “The Hall of Fame was a bridge between them.” 

Another challenge was to see that the Hall of Fame inductees represented the contributions of women and minorities, in an industry that had been long dominated by white men, and Mr. McGorry saw to it, improving representation in each class of inductees.

The McGorry family has been woven into the fabric of the media industry since Bill began working with broadcast publications almost 40 years ago. Phyllis worked at The Daily News. Their oldest child, Tim, worked at CNBC and the Monitor channel and is a freelance financial writer. Pam is in her 15th year at CSPAN, Jennifer McGorry McCormick worked for A&E and PBS, and Amy McGorry, a practicing physical therapist, also worked as an on-air reporter and anchor for News 12. Sarah McGorry was at Turner and NBC in ad sales, and Regan McGorry Beaton is an attorney with IMG, an agency specializing in sports, media and licensing.

They bought a house in Silver Beach in 1996, after renting a nearby house for a few years. Bill and Phyllis now live in a renovated and remodeled version of that old ranch house, a home full of memorabilia and chairs of every description.

Enough chairs to seat their six children, a phalanx of spouses and grandchildren and their many friends at the formal dining table, kitchen table, living room, or poolside.  An elaborately carved bar anchors the end of the living room adjacent to the fireplace, and a fully decorated floor to ceiling Christmas tree dominates the formal dining room 365 days of the year.

Bill has seen a lot of change here since the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, but maybe not as much on Shelter Island as elsewhere. “It’s such an unusual place,” he said. “When I would drive out in the summer, I would get on that ferry and things would just lift. You left all the tough stuff behind.”

LIGHTNING ROUND — BILL McGORRY

What do you always have with you? A Marine Corps coin given to me by a comrade to share with another.

Favorite place on Shelter Island? The beach across from our house in Silver Beach.

Favorite place not on Shelter Island? Annapolis. The Fleet Reserve Club.

Favorite sports/teams? I’m a Knicks fan.

What is the best day of the year on Shelter Island? The weekend after Labor Day.

Favorite movie or book? ‘Where’s Poppa?’ 1970 with Ruth Gordon. Hemingway, ‘The Old Man and the Sea.’

Favorite food? Macaroni and cheese.

Favorite person, living or dead, who is not a member of the family? The father of cable television, Bill Daniels.

Most respected elected official? Harry Truman.