2023 Holiday Issue

10
Local Businessman Bets
Big and Wins
Story by MICHAEL DAIGLE
Photos by KAREN FUCITO
In 1969, Keith Pokorny bet five bucks on Joe
Namath.
He won.
He had a feeling the brash New York
Jets quarterback would follow through on
his guarantee that the Jets would beat the
Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.
The game was the first Super Bowl he
attended, Pokorny said. It wasn’t his last.
That kind of instinct, a kind of “know when
to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em” sense, was
also in play, his son Brian Pokorny said, when
20 years ago, his father opened U-Stor-It selfstorage
in Jefferson. The family now owns four
such facilities. In addition to U-Stor-It, there is
Woodport Self Storage (also in Jefferson), AA-1
Self Storage in Ogdensburg and U-Lock-It of
Pocono in Bartonsville, Pennsylvania.
“Dad saw the chance to add to the business,”
said the younger Pokorny, who manages his
father’s businesses.
The move into the storage industry came
at a time when the Pokornys’ manufacturing
business—they had been making wiring relays
for cars and trucks since 1971—was being
pressed by cheaper Chinese products. That
company would eventually close in 2019.
“I can say that vision was appreciated,” Brian
Pokorny said. “The storage facilities are thriving
and growing.”
That sense of when to change also was in
play when the family opened the facility in the
Woodport section of Jefferson. The newest
business includes climate-controlled units,
tapping a new market.
“There was a need,” the elder Pokorny said.
Clients needed to store items such as furs,
which require colder storage temperatures,
or HO-scale model trains, which require dry
storage to inhibit rust, he said.
When he is not innovating his way through
LAKE HOPATCONG NEWS Holiday 2023
the Jersey business landscape, Keith Pokorny
is attending National Football League Super
Bowls—39 of them so far.
He’s planning on making it 40 on February
11, 2024, when Super Bowl LVIII is played at
Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
“It’s the best stadium,” he said. “Not a bad
seat in the house.”
The $2 billion stadium seats 65,000 and
opened in 2020. Pokorny saw it for the first
time when his daughter snagged tickets to the
Rolling Stones concert on November 6, 2021.
At first, he said, their seats were blocked by
the large panels that are used on game days as
the setting for the television post-game shows.
But they disappeared, slipping below the
playing field, leaving a clear view of the stadium
and the stage, he said with a hint of awe.
But if Pokorny can say a $2 billion stadium can
have no bad seats, it is a reflection of the Super
Bowl games he has attended and the times in
which we live.
After attending a Super Bowl in Detroit
when it was 20 below zero, a little comfort is
well appreciated. Or in New Orleans, paying a
disc jockey $100 to have the guy’s wife drive
Pokorny and his party to a restaurant. (They
had been dropped off by a limo driver one mile
from the Mercedes-Benz Superdome and one
mile from downtown, Pokorny said.)
In 39 games, he said, he has seen the Super
Bowl shift from college stadiums or older
municipal stadiums like the Los Angeles
Memorial Coliseum, where the first Super
Bowl was held, or the Orange Bowl in Miami,
where the Jets beat the Colts, to the modern
showplace stadiums.
Today the stadiums themselves and the
events spawned for each Super Bowl are part
of the show.
It is estimated that Super Bowl LVIII will
generate between $500 to $700 million in
external revenue for the Las Vegas business
community.
Left to right: Keith Pokorny
and son Brian Pokorny at
their self-storage unit in
Jefferson. Pokorny at home
with some of his Super Bowl
memorabilia. A collection of
give-aways from past games.
Pokorny said he has attended many of
the Super Bowls as part of excursion tours
sponsored by Atlantic City casinos. That
connection allowed him an intro to the celebrity
world that surrounds modern sporting events.
He tells his Super Bowl stories with humility,
wonder and humor.
“I’ve played golf with Willie Mays, Ron
Jaworski, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus,” he
said.
One of the most famous major league
baseball Hall of Famers, a Super Bowl-playing
quarterback and two of the most famous and
most important professional golfers in the
game.
“Imagine that, for a little guy from Lake
Hopatcong,” he said.
In Indianapolis for Super Bowl XLVI,
Pokorny said he gained an appreciation for
the generosity of the Manning family, whose
ties to the city relate to Peyton Manning, the
star quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts
for 14 years. A foundation started by Peyton
Manning has contributed more than $50
million to fund programs for disadvantaged
families and children. In 2007, a local pediatric
hospital was renamed the Peyton Manning
Children’s Hospital at Ascension St. Vincent
in Indianapolis after a multi-million dollar
donation by Manning’s foundation.
So, back to Joe Namath.
In 1969 the NFL and the American Football
League, in which the Jets played, were separate
leagues.
In 1967 the league bosses set up a “league
championship game”—not even named a Super
Bowl. The Green Bay Packers, as established a
team as there was at the time, won the first two
championship games.
The Namath game, finally renamed Super
Bowl III, changed a lot. The Jets win cemented
moves that in three years led to the merger
of the two leagues into the NFL as we know
it today.
Pokorny liked the brashness of Namath, the
anti-establishment sense of the player and the
game. Besides, it was just five bucks, he said.
Also, while the Jets were then a New Yorkbased
team, playing at Shea Stadium—they