Bill Corum | |
|---|---|
 Corum in a 1944 publication | |
| Born | Martene Windsor Corum (1895-07-20)July 20, 1895 Speed, Missouri, US |
| Died | December 16, 1958(1958-12-16) (aged 63) |
| Occupations | Journalist, announcer, horseracing executive |
Martene Windsor "Bill"Corum (July 20, 1895 – December 16, 1958) was an American journalist, announcer, and horseracing executive. He was a sports columnist for theNew York Evening Journal and theNew York Journal-American, and served as president ofChurchill Downs for nine years. He is widely credited for coining the term "Run for the Roses" to describe theKentucky Derby.
Corum was born on July 20, 1895, inSpeed, Missouri. He attended high school inBoonville, Missouri and graduated fromWentworth Military Academy inLexington, Missouri in 1913. He then entered theUniversity of Missouri, graduating in 1917.[1]
Corum enlisted in theU.S. Army upon the United States entry intoWorld War I and would later earn a commission. He served as company commander of Company D, 101st Infantry Battalion of the 96th Infantry Division and, at age 23, was the youngest major in the Army during the war.[1]
Following the war, Corum entered theColumbia University School of Journalism, while working as a copy editor atThe New York Times. He then became assistant sports editor after graduating from Columbia.[1]
In 1924, Corum was assigned to the baseball beat covering theBrooklyn Dodgers. In July 1925, he leftThe Times for theNew York Evening Journal to cover theNew York Giants. By 1926, Corum became the Journal's lead columnist. His first column appeared July 28, 1926. Over the next 32 years, he filed nearly 10,000 columns with theEvening Journal and, following the merger of Hearst's morning and afternoon papers, theNew York Journal-American, becoming one of the nation's most recognizable sports columnists and radio personalities.[2]
On radio, Corum called theKentucky Derby withClem McCarthy, and theWorld Series withRed Barber among others. Starting with the firstJoe Louis vs. Billy Conn heavyweight title fight on June 18, 1941, Corum joined announcerDon Dunphy as ringsidecolor commentator. Over the next twelve years, Dunphy and Corum called nearly 500 major fights on Gillette'sFriday Night Fights from New York'sMadison Square Garden. Along withDamon Runyon,Grantland Rice,Ring Lardner,Red Smith,Walter Winchell,John Drebinger, andMax Kase, Corum was a major player in sports radio and news in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Runyon described Corum as follows: "He is short, chubby and debonair. He looks cheerful and lives cheerfully [...] he writes about sports events as he sees them, and he always sees them a little more clearly than the rest of us. No more popular chap than Bill Corum ever lived in this man's town. He is one of the ablest journalists of these times and one of the grandest guys."[2]
In 1947, Corum was named executive vice president ofSuffolk Downs.[3]
WhenMatt Winn died after serving as president ofChurchill Downs for 47 years in 1949, Corum was named to succeed him. Corum had called theKentucky Derby on radio for most of the previous quarter century and had coined the term "Run for the Roses" in 1925. He oversaw the first televised broadcast of the Derby in 1952 and took on major expansion projects at the racetrack. During that time, he continued to write his daily column and hostedThe Bill Corum Sports Show on television.[2]
Corum died on December 16, 1958, aged 63.[1]
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