by Jerry Connors

Harrisburg, PA — William C. “Bill” Fidati, 76, a Philadelphia journalist known to many in harness racing as the long-serving publicity director at Garden State Park, died June 27, 2011.

Mr. Fidati, who earned a B.A. from Notre Dame as #1 in his class, worked for two major Philadelphia newspapers, the Daily News and then the Bulletin, for two decades, and was regarded as a “digger” by colleague Frank Bilovsky, someone who could get to the heart of a story — he could “get people to tell him things.” Fidati won the Best Reporting Award from the area’s Press Association for his coverage of City Hall in 1970.

He also first showed a 40-year genius for lending a helping hand to fledgling journalists who showed the talent to work their way up, sometimes in the face of a hard-boiled lot who were the news and were covering the news. Andrea Mitchell, now NBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, recalled, “He reached out and mentored me … and even got me to smoke the occasional cigar,” a Fidati trademark.

Mr. Fidati also worked the racing beat (one freshly-graduated publicity pup remembers Fidati watching him writing out a story in longhand, a leftover from college days, and predicted, “You won’t be doing that long”), and he was named publicity director of Philadelphia Park (now Parx) in 1982, and moved across the river when the new Garden State opened four years later.

A newcomer to harness racing office work remembers her first job at Garden State, “operating the matrix board,” but she remembers much more vividly how Mr. Fidati helped her in various jobs when she started to write about the races. “Then, in 1986, the Breeders Crown races were at Garden State,” stated Communicators Hall of Fame nominee Moira Fanning, “and while working for Bill I was introduced to Tom Charters.” That quarter-century relationship, starting at Mr. Fidati’s home base, is still going strong today with the outstanding work done by the duo for the Hambletonian Society and the Breeders Crown.

It would require a long, long search to find somebody who had a bad word to say about Bill Fidati — or for that matter about a co-worker of his at Garden State and a very close friend, present Dover PR chief Marv Bachrad. Both were quiet men by nature, but thoughtful, and they led by example to a long list of young workers on their way up the racing ladder.

Mr. Fidati was close with his sister, Louise Grieve, living just down the block from her, and he is survived by her and nieces Denise Paykos, Donna Vivian, and Dawn Zappacosta.

A funeral mass in Bordentown, N.J., preceded Mr. Fidati’s interment today in Calvary Cemetery, Florence, N.J.