Ligonier man worked for Coke, Disney, Steelers, Pitt, and drove limousines
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Lelia Tosh can remember being in a grocery store, several thousand miles away from home on one of her family’s many motor home trips, and catching her father straightening up the store’s Coca-Cola display.
“We’d say, ‘C’mon, Dad, we’re on vacation!’ ” Tosh said. “But he was just so proud.”
Her father, Ken, was a regional sales manager for Coca-Cola for 25 years, part of a career that included owning a restaurant and a limousine service and sales jobs that brought him into the bowels of Beaver Stadium at Penn State and Heinz Field in Pittsburgh.
Kenneth W. Tosh of Ligonier died Nov. 13, 2021. He was 86.
Mr. Tosh was born May 1, 1935, in Ligonier, son of the late Charles V. and Margaret W. Tosh. He grew up a few miles away from the 85-acre homestead he eventually called home.
“He used to ride his bicycle in high school to work for the farmer there,” Lelia said. “Sometimes, the farmer didn’t have the money to pay him. Over time, he offered to give my Dad an acre or two of land.”
Over the years, Mr. Tosh continued to build up his acreage, building what Lelia called “his dream house on the hill.” He raised his family there after marrying his wife, Shirley, with whom he celebrated a 66th anniversary earlier this month.
For a short period of time, Mr. Tosh also was the owner of 4T’s Family Restaurant in New Florence and the Rolling Hills Limousine Service.
“The limo service was my dad and another gentleman — they did it for about three to four years and worked some weddings and proms,” Lelia said. “He’d always tell stories about sitting at the bar, waiting to take the bride and groom to the airport, about what people would be saying when they came to get their drinks.”
When Coca-Cola had the soft drink concession at Penn State in the 1970s, the Tosh family would get up at 4 a.m. to make the drive to Beaver Stadium, where everyone would pitch in.
“My mom would check the vendors in when they came to pick up more Coke,” Lelia said. “It was a family affair and a lot of hard work, but it was fun.”
Shortly after Mr. Tosh retired in 2005, Lelia introduced him and his wife to some friends at the Steelers training camp in Latrobe. Her father’s outgoing personality quickly led to a part-time gig in the big white Steelers merchandise tent that now greets training camp visitors. There, Mr. Tosh was known as “the magnet man.”
“Back then, they would give you the magnetic team schedule right when you walked into the tent,” she said. “I live in Pittsburgh, and when they started working merchandise sales on game days, they’d come down and we’d make a whole weekend of it. We’d work the Pitt game on Saturday and the Steelers games on Sunday.”
With such a wide range of interests and experience, Mr. Tosh seemed to make an easy connection with anyone he met, his daughter said.
“You would meet him, and he’d always ask where you were from,” she said. “Wherever it was, he would know somebody that you knew.”
He even knew Mickey Mouse. When the Toshes spent winters at their second home in Orlando, Mr. Tosh and Shirley worked a couple of days a week at the Tower of Terror and the Rock’n’Roller Coaster at Walt Disney World.
“He was one of those people who could walk into a room of strangers and, five minutes later, the whole room would be his friends,” Lelia said.
Mr. Tosh is survived by his wife, Shirley, daughter, Lelia, of Pittsburgh and son, Joel, of Norfolk, Va.
Friends will be received Thursday from 10 a.m. to noon, with a memorial service to follow, at Snyder-Green Funeral Home, 402 E. Church St. in Ligonier.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the National Kidney Foundation or American Heart Association.