Mona Task List Includes New Book
Dave
Mona’s new book, “Beyond the Sports Huddle,” is written with
efficiency, clarity, charm and wit. That’s pretty much the way Mona, a
1964 graduate of the University of Minnesota, has lived his life.
He has done enough during his six-plus
decades to pretty much fill two or three lifetimes. So why not author a
book, too? He’s done just that with a 286 page publication that is pure
Mona, with tales about people he’s known ranging from Kirby Puckett
to Hubert Humphrey, from Muhammad Ali to Molly Ivins,
with a mass murderer included for intrigue. With points for efficiency,
Mona even includes stories he’s written in the past including a piece on
baseball card collecting he authored long ago for the Minneapolis Tribune.
Who is Dave Mona? Well, unless you just
flew in from across the Pond, you probably know him as a radio
personality on WCCO. For 27 years he’s been heard on WCCO Radio’s
Sunday Sports Huddle and since 1998 he’s provided color
commentary on Gopher football. In 2006 he won Associated Press and
Edward R. Murrow writing awards for his pregame vignettes.
Writing and creativity come easy to Mona,
who grew up in Minneapolis, the son of South High School basketball
coach Lute Mona. Mona was sports editor of the Minnesota
Daily where he had a talent for encouraging young (and not so
gifted) writers on his staff. In typical multi-tasking fashion, he
worked at WCCO TV while a student at the University, serving as a news
room dispatcher and assisting with a hilarious late night Saturday show
called the Bedtime Nooz starring Dave Moore.
Although most journalists aspire to work
at a big city newspaper out of college, few are talented enough and
prepared for the assignment. Mona went straight to the Tribune where he
worked for five years with two seasons devoted to covering the Minnesota
Twins.
Along the way he decided that 100 days or
so away from home was too much. He made his way into the public
relations profession and later became the founder and current chairman
of Weber Shandwick, the region’s largest PR firm.
In addition to Weber Shandwick, all he’s
done over the years is raise a nice family with wife Linda, own
and operate the Field of Dreams sports memorabilia stores, personally
collect over a million baseball cards, assist many community
organizations with his leadership and marketing savvy including the
Minneapolis chamber and the University of Minnesota athletic department,
emcee and speak at many events, and provide enough sports insights on WCCO
Radio to keep your average Minnesotan sounding sports savvy around the
office water cooler.
He’s done it all with energy, intelligence
and a high likeability factor, making it look so easy. Dave Mona is
Minnesota nice.
And always the quick wit with willingness
to tell stories, anecdotes from long ago and today. The book is full of
them including a number of paragraphs devoted to Molly Ivins,
the tall and outspoken Texan who worked with Mona at the Tribune before
going on to a famed writing career where she bashed a lot of people
including Bill Clinton whose character was described as “weaker
than bus station chili.”
Mona remembers in the book, too, that
Ivins came to Minneapolis without an overcoat. A few weeks later she
corrected that and paraded into the newsroom wearing a floor-length
reddish-orange coat that matched her reddish hair. Mona writes that
assistant managing editor Frank Premack shouted, “My God, it
looks like a bad paint job on the Foshay Tower.”
Mona has a series of book signings
including on
Thursday, August 19 at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, Galleria, 3225 W. 69th
Street, Edina.
