Gifford There for Friend

Frank Gifford and Roone Arledge were about as close as could be. Gifford was among the few people outside Arledge’s immediate family who visited the former president of ABC Sports and ABC News regularly before he died Thursday.

“I was closer to Roone than my own brother,” Gifford said Friday. “He was my boss, but he was my friend first.”

Gifford will speak at Arledge’s funeral today at 10:30 a.m. at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York.

Gifford visited Arledge last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. On Thursday, Arledge’s wife, Gigi, called to tell Gifford her husband had died.

“When Gigi called, she didn’t have to say anything,” Gifford said. “I knew he was gone.”

Gifford said Arledge had been battling prostate cancer for six or seven years.

“What a lot of people don’t know is he had quadruple bypass heart surgery on New Year’s Day this past January,” Gifford said. “Considering that he was also battling the cancer, he came through that pretty well.”

Gifford said he hadn’t seen his friend during the Thanksgiving holiday and when he came to the hospital Monday, Gigi told him he wasn’t in good shape.

“I held his hand, but he wasn’t really able to communicate,” Gifford said. “But I stayed at the hospital to talk with Gigi.”

Gifford and Arledge played golf at Deepdale Golf Course on Long Island every Friday until Arledge’s failing health prevented him from playing beyond the spring of 2001.

Gifford told Gigi a story from one of those outings, a few days after Howard Cosell’s funeral in April 1995.

“We were talking about Howard as only two men who knew him well could,” Gifford said. “On this one hole, after I duck-hooked one into the woods, I made a gesture up toward the sky and said, ‘OK, Howard, you got me.’

“Then Roone also duck-hooked one into the woods, almost in the exact same place I did. Howard got him too.

“After that, we always referred to that hole as ‘Howard’s hole.’

“Anyway, as I was finishing telling this story to Gigi, Roone suddenly began to talk. I don’t want to say exactly what he said, but he essentially said he was playing better than me that day.”

Those were the last words Gifford heard from his friend of more than 40 years.

“I can’t tell you what a great friend he was,” Gifford said. “Our lives kind of paralleled one another’s. We seemed to have the same problems in our lives at the same time, and he was always one I could confide in.”

Arledge put Gifford in the “Monday Night Football” booth in 1971, and Gifford remained there until 1998.

“The past couple of years, Roone and I had the time to spend a lot of time together, and we did,” Gifford said. “I’d visit him regularly in the hospital and we’d often walk the halls and reflect on how things were and how they are today.

“He was a wonderful newsman and a wonderful human.”

Gifford also had some nice things to say about Gigi.

“She was wonderful for Roone,” Gifford said, “a pillar of strength through all of this.”