Bob Gillespie

Bob Gillespie, a native of Orangeburg, S.C., landed his first newspaper job in 1976 at the Orangeburg Times & Democrat, and that fall as sports editor covered the Willie Jeffries 10-1 South Caroline State team that won the Black National Championship. A 1973 graduate in journalism at the University of South Carolina, he earned a masters degree in mass communications from USC in 1979. He left the Times & Democrat in 1978 for the Charleston News & Courier and Evening Post, and joined the now-defunct Columbia Record in 1979, moving to The State in 1988. He has worked as a sports reporter, columnist and enterprise writer, and has won writing awards from the S.C. Press Association, Associated Press Sports Editors, National Association of Black Journalists and others. Gillespie and his wife, Jane, live in Columbia.