ASHLAND – Tom Puskar has lived a lot of life concealed behind a camera lens.
It’s been a kind of comfortable personal camouflage.
But when he was inducted March 21 into the Ohio Prep Sports Media Association Hall of Fame, the longtime Ashland-area photographer had to be the subject instead of the shooter.
Puskar shook hands with OHSAA director of media relations Tim Stried, then was presented a plaque by current Mansfield News Journal sports editor Jake Furr during halftime of the Division VI boys basketball state championship game inside the University of Dayton Arena.
Furr, also a vice president for the OPSMA, nominated Puskar for the award. He’s just the second photographer to take home the honor since the inception of the association’s hall of fame more than 40 years ago.
After working alongside Tom for more than a decade of his 33-year tenure at the Ashland Times-Gazette, I know for certain he’d rather be working in a cozy photo darkroom than standing at center court in an arena.
Unfortunately for him, when your work helps highlight and define a community for well beyond a quarter of a century, you have to be on the other side of the shutter button at some point.
“It’s definitely something I never expected to happen and it’s not what I was doing it for, but it’s an honor to have that recognition,” Puskar told me. “To be only the second photographer ever inducted into that Hall of Fame makes it even more special.”
Without question, the guy deserves it. It was written in the cameraman stars.
Long before people were loading up countless pictures onto Instagram, he was helping fill photo albums in houses all over the area.
Tom first had a picture released across the Associated Press wire when he was still in junior high school.
His older brother, Gene – an AP photographer for nearly 50 years now – got him field credentials for a baseball game at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium in the early 1980s.
With that access, Tom snapped a photo of former Pirates all-star and four-time National League batting average champ Bill “Mad Dog” Madlock after he was hit by a pitch.
The image went over the national AP wire with the tagline “Mad Dog Down.”
“Somewhere in my boxes of stuff I have the AP laser photo of it,” Puskar said. “When it ran, I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
Gene was one of the many members of his family in attendance in Dayton during the plaque ceremony in March. It was a group that also included his wife, Heather Beasley.
Ironically, the championship game during which Tom was honored was won by Berlin Hiland, a team coached by Mark Schlabach. Two decades earlier, Tom had photographed Schlabach and his Final Four boys basketball teams at Loudonville in 2004 and 2005.
When you’re in the photojournalist game as long as Tom has been, that’s the stuff that tends to happen; the connections are rooted and weaving everywhere.
He’s snapped a few generations worth of families walking across numerous stages at their graduation ceremonies.
There isn’t a sport that’s been played in this area that hasn’t found its way to his camera lens — and I’d be willing to bet he knows every road in the county.
A 1990 Mount Union College graduate, Tom played baseball for the Purple Raiders while earning his degree in communications.
An internship at The Alliance Review led to a full-time gig at the Ashland Times-Gazette in May 1990 under former chief photographer Chic Knight.
That fall, the Loudonville football team played in the state championship game – the first-ever appearance in a football title game for an Ashland-area team.
Puskar was there to capture the moment.
“I was thinking, ‘This will be awesome – every year covering a game at the state championships,’” he said. “But that was the only time for an Ashland County school (before his time at the T-G ended in 2023).”
Despite the state football drought, the years after that huge game in 1990 were loaded with memories behind the camera for Puskar.
He spent his first six years at the T-G as a photographer under Knight, essentially shooting some kind of sport five nights out of every week.
There were the annual OHSAA softball state championships right here in Ashland at Brookside Park. Puskar got used to seeing dominant local squads make appearances there in the 1990s, including Hillsdale (1992, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1999); Loudonville (1991, 1993, 1997); Crestview (1992); and Ashland (1997).
That list added up to at least one local team making the state softball Final Four every year but two during the 1990s while Puskar was capturing photos for it.
He still remembers the star players from those squads by name. Those state recollections might just be his favorite as a photographer.
“A lot of memories have popped into my head from my career (during recent reflection),” Tom said. “I was lucky to do it as long as I did at the T-G. In 33 years, I saw a lot of great coaches, a lot of great athletes.”
There was a trip in March 1991 to Springfield, Mass., where he shot the Ashland University men’s basketball team during its only NCAA Division II Elite Eight appearance to date.
During our 10-plus years as co-workers — among hundreds of other events — he and I worked alongside each other in both 2012 and 2013, covering the AU women’s basketball team at the Division II Elite Eight in San Antonio, Texas.
Those were the seasons the Eagles first took off as a national powerhouse under former head coach Sue Ramsey – claiming runner-up in 2012 before winning it all in 2013 – and Puskar authored so many unforgettable images from those unforgettable runs.
He talked about the relationship he’s had through the years with current AU athletic director Al King and AU director of athletic communications Dusty Sloan – also a former co-worker of ours at the T-G.
“It was always a good partnership between the Times-Gazette and Ashland University,” Tom said. “It helped a lot both ways.”
For decades, he was one of the faces of the T-G, often helping it earn honors as one of the best papers of its size in Ohio.
He shot news, sports and everything in between.
For decades, if you wanted to find Tom on a Friday night in the fall or winter, all you had to do was drive to a local football or basketball game and look at the sideline.
Even after he left his job at the T-G in 2023 to become an employee of the city of Ashland as the marketing coordinator for Brookside Golf Course, Tom kept a tight grip on his camera, doing freelance work for Furr at the News Journal.
He’s even snapped some pictures for Ashland mayor Matt Miller from time to time.
When I saw Tom on the sideline last fall while covering an Ashland High School football game, I couldn’t help but think about the lasting mark he’s left on this area – so much of it behind the scenes.
“I know a lot of parents who would scrapbook, and I would go into a lot of peoples’ houses and I’d see my photos of their kids on the fridge,” Tom said. “That’s something I took pride in. … Those hard-copy things to keep for your memories, a lot of that doesn’t exist anymore. I feel sorry for the current generation of athletes.
“If I’m being honest,” he said, “I miss working as a photographer on a daily basis.”
Tom worked for eight editors at the T-G, including two stints under former editor Ted Daniels. He hired roughly 20 full- and-part-time photographers during 26 years as the paper’s chief cameraman.
When he’s had the chance, he’s done freelance work for the AP for more than 35 years – coverage that has included NFL and MLB games and two decades worth of images from the Little League World Series.
A lot of time has passed. For so many around here, he has frozen it with irreplaceable images.
“When I left the paper, it was a hard decision for me,” Tom said. “But I looked at it as, for 33 years – doing what I did on the news and sports side – I documented the history of Ashland and Ashland County photographically.
“It was my honor to do it and I loved doing it. It wasn’t work to me.”
