Herm Rogul, who once estimated he had had 6,234 bylines in the Bulletin before it closed in 1982, a mentor to anyone in sports or anywhere else who needed his knowledge both of the game and the art of sportswriting, died Tuesday. He was 72 and lived in Yorktown, North Philadelphia, within walking distance of his alma mater, Temple University.
He had been ill for some time, friends said, and lived alone. Although a man like Herm Rogul was never really alone. Friends dropped in constantly, figures from the sports pages, like Sonny Hill and venerable former Temple basketball coach John Chaney, another longtime friend. A cousin, Harold Katz, also cared for him in his final illnesses.
"He was very instrumental in my success," said Hill, founder of the Baker and the Sonny Hill Leagues, where some of the great pro players joined local talent to keep their skills sharp in the summer.
"Herm helped us," Sonny said. "He came to the games, wrote about the games and met the players. He was able to gain their confidence because they saw him around and trusted him."
Trust was a big element in Herm's professional career. "A writer should care about accuracy and treat people with respect," he was quoted as saying in an interview in the Daily News in 1995. "I liked readers to call me with questions. Today, some journalists won't answer their phones."
Herm wrote the People In Sports column for the Bulletin, from 1961 until the paper closed in 1982. It was chock full of names, of the great, the near-great and never-to-be great.
He liked being the first journalist to write about some athletes, including Bill Cosby, when Herm was a sportswriter for the Temple News, the university's undergraduate newspaper, and Cosby was a star athlete there.
