Bob O’Gara, professor emeritus, who dedicated 33 years of his life to Point Park’s School of Communication (SOC) and PR/AD programs, died onOct. 6, due to health complications. 

Helen Fallon, the professor emeritus who was the former dean, SOC department chair, and honor’s program director, worked very closely with O’Gara. She knew him for the last 30 years.

Towards the end of his tenure, the two were office mates, she said.

“He always gave guidance and assistance to anyone who needed it,” Fallon said. “There wasn’t a Point Park event that he missed. I don’t think he ever missed a commencement.” 

For three years In 2019, Meghan Macioce, a 2019 and 2022 alumna, shared an office with O’Gara as a graduate student.  She first met him in her undergrad, during her freshman year, when she took his Intro to PR/AD class. 

Every day he asked her, “Hey how are you doing?” or “Howdy neighbor?”

In those three years, they made a deal, she said. She would show him how to update the password on his computer so he didn’t have to call IT, and before the end of work, he would leave a crunch bar on her keyboard. 

He was known to have a bowl full of candy, she said. Both students and faculty would come into the office to say, “I’m just here to see Bob’s Candy dish.”

One day she said she made fun of him for keeping peppermint patties in the dish. Yet, he just replied with the specific name of someone who he must have specifically bought them for.

She recalled that every day, at 2:45 p.m., his wife would call him, not on his cell phone but on his office phone. 

“He would say, ‘I’m coming home sweetie,”’ Macioce said. “It was so sweet to hear how that type of love just existed. He would leave every day at three to go home and see her. He loved his job, but he loved his family so much more.” 

From 2009 to 2017, he went on the majority of every international trip, Fallon said. On these trips, she often called him her “Point Park date.”

Fallon said she was with O’Gara on the first or second time the SOC went to Ireland, and the pair kept making left turns until they were lost. Then, when the two tried to get onto a bus to go back where they wanted to, they learned they got onto the wrong one.

On another trip, their first one to Washington DC they came across a large woman in high leather boots with a whip, and it wasn’t Halloween, she said, but springtime. O’Gara cracked a joke.

“He said, ‘Oh Helen, get a look at that, it’s a dominatrix,’” she said. “We went on so many adventures,”

Although at times they had disagreements, he always had the same moral compass to keep what was best for students in sight, she said.

When her husband died suddenly in 2007, Fallon was still the SOC chair. At the time, O’Gara helped her do all the work she couldn’t until she fully returned to work. 

“It’s hard to argue with someone like that,” Fallon said.

Bernie Ankney, dean of the SOC, remembered O’Gara as a friend, mentor and colleague. When he interviewed for the dean position in 2019, O’Gara was a part of the process, although he was retired.

“It was one of the defining parts of his life,” Ankney said. “Bob was always concerned about where the SOC was going, and how could we make it truly exceptional.” 

In his time, Ankney created an office for emeritus faculty. He said that, when O’Gara came into the office either once a month, once a week or a few times a week, he was always a “gracious person,” who asked Ankney what he could do to support him as dean.  

When O’Gara retired around 10 years ago, as an emeritus faculty, he continued to teach. Ankney said that a couple of years ago, as O’Gara approached his late 70s, the professor emeritus realized that teaching started to become a lot, so he began to step away.

Macioce recalled holding camera quizzes for students in the shared office with O’Gara present.

“I would ask them are you ok with Bob watching? And they’re like yeah it’s fine,” Macioce said. Most of the students didn’t know him. She thought the only reason they let him watch was because he’d say, “If you do well you get a piece of candy.”

In the office, he had lots of stuff with the filing cabinets overflowing. She said that, in her three years there, he would tell her, “One day I will get this cleaned up,” but he never did.

Kristopher Radde, a 2009 photojournalism graduate, remembered O’Gara as a friendly face around campus. Although he never had O’Gara for class, he said that he was a person who enjoyed helping students and was a “joy” to be with when he was in a group traveling with the school.

“His door was always open, and I would find myself in his office just talking about life and the world of journalism,” Radde said.  

Christine Mormile is a 2007 graduate from Point Park, with a double major in PR/AD and broadcasting. She remembered the Ad competition class trip they took with O’Gara to New York City (NYC).

At the competition, she said that they “failed miserably” at the Coca-Cola media plan they created to present. Point Park was one of the bottom-performing schools that year. In hindsight, she said that she had no idea what she was doing. 

After the presentation, on the way back to the hotel, she said she rambled to the group about how they would do better next time when O’Gara cut her off.

“‘Well, you’re the whole reason that we messed up and lost,’” he said to Mormile. 

She thinks that her talking made O’Gara go “kinda crazy.” When she thinks back on the memory, she laughs. 

“It made me cry, it made me upset,” Mormile said. “It made me say that I need to give it my all.”

Without his push, she said that she wouldn’t have interviewed for the job she has today. Nowadays, she appreciates how tough he was on her, she said. 

She currently works as a media planner for the CMI media group, with a focus on pharmaceuticals and healthcare.

In the spring of 2019, in the class of a SOC full-time professor named Robin Ceala, students received extra credit to record themselves roasting Bob for his retirement party. Macioce thinks O’Gara got the idea for the roast from Justin Beiber’s. 

Although no one wanted to roast O’Gara, she said, the party turned out to be as humorous as he hoped.

“He would always slap his knee, he was always a knee slapper when he would laugh that hard,” Macioce said.

Andy Coleman, a PR/AD grad from the class of 2006 said that O’Gara was his academic advisor and that under his leadership, he participated in the Ad Competition class. Throughout his work doing arts marketing for the Pittsburgh Symphony and most recently becoming a communications project manager in Carnegie Mellon’s University Advancement division, he said that O’Gara was always supportive.

“Following graduation and my entrance into the industry, we stayed in touch and he invited me back as a guest speaker for several groups of students over the years,” Coleman said. “[He] will forever be one of the biggest reasons why I have a passion for advertising and marketing.”

Maria Miller, a 1999 graduate said she took many of O’Gara’s classes in college and traveled with him to Italy and Greece on a SOC trip.

“I’m forever grateful for what I learned from his real-world experience in class,” Miller said. “During that time, he had a profound impact on my professional life. He led our PR Class to an internship with the United Way that inspired my career in the non-profit sector.”

O’Gara served on the board of Mainstay Life Services and was an education advisor to the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSSA). The chapter inducted him into the Hall of Fame, according to an email sent by the Provost’s office on Oct. 8, informing the university community of O’Gara’s death. 

The PRSSA did not respond to an interview request about O’Gara.

O’Gara also served as a photographer in the New York and Pennsylvania Air National Guard and the U.S. Air Force. The PRSSA Bob O’Gara Scholarship and an award were also named in his honor.

Fallon said O’Gara would often “pass on pictures” of clouds and his trips to Cape May, N.J., through email to faculty. He always had a camera, liked nature and the outdoors, exercised regularly and enjoyed jazz and classical music.

“Someone like Bob is the heart and the soul for a place like Point Park,” Fallon said. “He never lost sight of our students.”