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A few clouds. Low around 55F. Winds light and variable..
A few clouds. Low around 55F. Winds light and variable.
Gib Zilner, left, and Joe Renosky, posed with a deer that Zilner shot on a 2018 hunting trip.
Zilner kept part of his collection of big-game hunting trophies in his office at the Diamond Drug distribution center on Kolter Drive in Indiana County Commerce Park.
Zilner kept part of his collection of big-game hunting trophies in his office at the Diamond Drug distribution center on Kolter Drive in Indiana County Commerce Park.
Gib Zilner, left, and Joe Renosky, posed with a deer that Zilner shot on a 2018 hunting trip.
Zilner kept part of his collection of big-game hunting trophies in his office at the Diamond Drug distribution center on Kolter Drive in Indiana County Commerce Park.
Zilner kept part of his collection of big-game hunting trophies in his office at the Diamond Drug distribution center on Kolter Drive in Indiana County Commerce Park.
He reached a lot of pinnacles in his life, won many honors, earned a lot of acclaim.
Gilbert Zilner — known as that mainly on his driver’s license and checking account — left a business legacy literally of Hall of Fame status as the founder of the Indiana-based Diamond Drug corporate empire.
Better known as “Gib” — to the countless whose paths he crossed, the myriad whose hands he shook, the thousand or more whose paychecks he signed — he touched lives and left imprints tough to account for in a formal accounting of his time on Earth.
A sportsman, a sports fan. A loyal friend and a friend maker.
“… My father, my friend, my coworker, my mentor and my hero,” Mark Zilner wrote in a Facebook announcement of Gib Zilner’s death. “He was an amazing role model to me, my family and our employees.”
“If you knew Gib, you knew he did things his own way, and he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind or stand up for what he believed was right,” according to a message posted online under Diamond Drug’s name. “He cared deeply about Diamond and the well-being of his employees. He cared about Diamond’s customers. He truly strived for Diamond to be the best, and he put his heart and soul into the company.”
He was remembered, too, as a giver, a common everyday guy, and as a gregarious one who enjoyed everyone he met, his closest of friends said Tuesday in reflecting on Zilner’s life.
Zilner, 84, passed away Saturday after a yearlong battle with pancreatic cancer, despite a recent rally that buoyed family, friends and his hopes for a better long-term prognosis. That moderation of his condition was attributed to his treatment with a recently developed medication, advanced in part by Indiana University of Pennsylvania graduate John Kopchick, that makes cancer less resistant to chemotherapy.
The drug was developed by a research team led by Kopchick and described in 2021 in a Journal of the Endocrine Society article, “Growth Hormone Receptor Inhibition Sensitizes Human Pancreatic Cancer to Chemotherapy Treatments.” The paper described the development of a multidrug compound that helped to block the effect of human growth hormones proven to “have a distinct role in promoting the progression of several types of human cancers.” Through development and testing, Kopchick’s team “confirm(ed) that GHR antagonism can drastically sensitize human pancreatic cancer cells by blocking mechanisms of drug resistance, thus providing a valuable window for improved efficacy of available chemo- and targeted therapy.”
That trust in the emerging form of treatment wouldn’t be surprising for the man who built a career in the pharmaceutical industry, from his graduation from Duquesne University in 1960 to his 1970 takeover of Diamond Drug Store in downtown Indiana. Together with his wife, fellow pharmacist and store co-owner, Gib and Joan Zilner positioned the company 30 years later for their son Mark to take to national leadership as a provider of institutional pharmacy services with business clients in 47 states.
The company was honored in 2018 as a Family Business Award recipient by Pittsburgh Business Times. The local Boy Scouts organization presented a Distinguished Citizen Award to the Zilner family in 2017.
Gib and Joan Zilner together were presented Distinguished Alumni Awards in 2014 at Duquesne University.
In 2015, Gib and Joan Zilner were inducted together in the first class of Indiana County Business Hall of Fame honorees.
Publicly, Zilner was the face of Diamond Drug, who fostered its growth into the nation’s largest family-owned pharmacy.
Privately, Zilner enjoyed touring the world in quest of exotic game. His trophies came from several continents.
He banded together with a random collection of local football fans who called themselves the “Indiana Touchdown Club” and booked bus trips to see college and pro football games throughout the northeastern U.S. each fall.
He enjoyed laughing; he relished getting a laugh — especially when shared with his closest friends and all they met.
Zilner was the guy who ordered silence in his busy office one day when his building contractor and close friend John Morganti entered, dressed in tool belt and ready to make a fix.
“Everybody stop what you’re doing! Ladies and gentlemen, John Morganti will now dance on the table!” Zilner announced.
“That was his sense of humor,” Morganti laughed.
“I first met him when he came to Indiana (in 1970). I (with his contracting business partner Dave Buggey) built everything he has, basically. Our friendship blossomed from there. Gib said if I couldn’t do a job, then he wasn’t going to have it done. That was pretty powerful, to me,” Morganti said.
Hunting partner Joe Renosky crossed the U.S. and through most Canadian provinces with Zilner over their 40-year friendship.
“We had some phenomenal trips,” Renosky said.
There was the day Zilner carried out a bunch of doughnuts from the breakfast table at a Saskatchewan hunting lodge and hoisted them with his weapon to a tree stand at the start of a bear hunt.
A bear wasn’t hard to find.
Following its nose and climbing halfway up to Zilner’s stand, a hungry bear backed off and fled when Zilner shouted him down, Renosky said.
(The bear was little and Zilner let it go, according to Renosky.)
Bears, elk, deer and turkey were Gib’s favorite game close to home.
But Zilner’s vast collection of game trophies — fully stuffed animals, mounted heads and racks, pelts and rugs — were about as plentiful as the number of his hunting trips and destinations.
Curiously, Renosky said, Zilner also was fascinated with and amassed quite a collection of bear traps.
On a caribou hunt in Quebec, Renosky said, he loaded up Zilner’s field-dressed kill on his back to carry back to camp but Zilner asked him to take a picture of him with the animal on his own back. Renosky said he agreed but told Zilner to actually carry it 20 yards first.
Each harvested a pair of caribou on the expedition but someone stole both of Renosky’s animals as they prepared to break camp and head home.
Zilner gave one of his kills to Renosky, he said.
While Africa, Canada and the western U.S. were common big game hunting destinations for Zilner, places like Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and even a few Canadian towns were football destinations for Zilner, Morganti and their pals.
“Gibby was just a pretty sociable guy. He was friendly, laughing, he told jokes,” Morganti said. “We went to parties at their house, we went out to dinner with him and Joan.”
Hunting was a part of their friendship but not on the level of overseas expeditions.
“We went rabbit hunting, but my dad and Gibby were more worried about finding a place to eat for lunch than where to get a rabbit!” Morganti said.
Morganti told of regularly having Zilner over to his house to play bocce, and meeting his circle of friends.
“And I introduced him to John Kopchick. I had known him since Little League and we remained friends all these years,” Morganti said. “So when Gib came down with pancreatic cancer, I called him up right away.”
They arranged a visit to Zilner and his family to consider the new medication. He signed on for the treatment.
“It extended his life. We thought he was going to get better, and he was really doing well after his surgery,” Morganti said.
And so his quest for the best life could offer went on.
Zilner’s last safari was in central Indiana County this past spring, when Renosky took him out for a day of spring gobbler hunting at Renosky’s private 400-acre retreat along Yellow Creek.
It’s the place where Zilner learned to shoot a crossbow and killed many turkeys and deer over the last decade, Renosky said.
“He called me in April and said he hadn’t been hunting since November, and said he wanted to go turkey hunting,” Renosky said.
Renosky escorted Zilner to a blind to stake out some birds, then doubled back to camp and sent his son, Steve Renosky, to meet up with Gib at the blind.
“Steve was riding up the trail to the blind and he heard two shots. Gib got a big gobbler already,” Renosky said. “It was his last hunt.”
He said Zilner’s defiance of his sickness defined his desire.
“He was one tough bird. Tough. He wasn’t strong, but he was tough-willed,” Renosky said.
“I’ll miss his smile, his laughter,” Morganti said. “He had a great sense of humor. I don’t know of anybody that didn’t like him.
“He was just a fun guy. You would never know by meeting him that he owned one of the biggest healthcare centers in the country. He was a people guy, it didn’t matter who you were, he got along with you.”
Bowser Funeral Home of Homer City is hosting visitation for Gib Zilner’s family and friends this evening and Thursday. A funeral Mass at St. Bernard of Clairvaux Roman Catholic Church will be streamed online at the parish website at 11 a.m. Friday.
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