Blue White Illustrated

Steve Jones has had since succeeding Fran in 2000. Before the 1990s, college football games did not saturate televi- sion as they do today. Cellphones and the Internet were not around through- out most of Fran's tenure. Fans who could not be inside the stadium on game day, home and away, needed to listen to the radio broadcast. If the broadcast was outside your area, you couldn't even get updates of the score unless you found it on another radio station or perhaps dur- ing the rare college game being televised that day. And to find out what really happened, you had to listen to Fran on the radio or wait unit the Sunday news- papers to read about it. Penn State's games have been broad- cast on radio since the 1930s. Fran Fish- er's tenure as radio play-by-play an- nouncer – two stretches (1970-82 and 1994-99) encompassing 19 years – is still the record. It was in that second stint that he teamed with analyst George Paterno. They were so popular that fans now think they were together all those other years. What most fans don't realize is how integral Fran was in selling Penn State football to the public, helping Paterno and Jim Tarman, the sports information director turned athletic director, market the team in the 1970s and '80s as Penn State sought national recognition and respect. They set up the radio network that continues to this day, upgraded the weekly live half-hour show with coaches and players called "TV Quarterbacks" that aired on PBS stations, and began the weekly radio call-in show for the head coach in 1988 that also continues. Fran hosted the TV and radio shows even when he wasn't handling play-by-play and at one point before he retired was the executive director of the Nittany Lion Club. And there was a lot more, like doing play-by-play for men's basketball from 1976-83, producing sports events for the local PBS station and handling emcee duties at various athletic depart- ment events. I first met Fran in the Beaver Stadium radio booth in September 1966. He was still working for WKVA in Lewistown and had been hired to be the third man in the booth, assisting play-by-play man Tom Bender and analyst Mickey Berg- stein. Bender worked for KDKA Radio, which was the prime station carrying Penn State football. I was working in TV news at another Pittsburgh station, and Tom asked me if I wanted to be his spot- ter in the booth, feeding him information as he called the game. It turned out to be a historic day, not because of Fran and me but because this was the coaching debut of then-39-year-old Joe Paterno. I spent three years in that booth spot- ting for the home games (and a couple of games at Pitt Stadium) but left for a new job in Detroit near the end of the 1969 season. I didn't return from the Midwest until moving to Washington, D.C., in 1983. However, I would see Fran every so often at bowl games, at a basketball game on the road, or at an Alumni Asso- ciation or Nittany Lion Club function. He never changed. It was like two old friends catching up on the missing years. I have a couple of special memories of Fran during this time, one very close to my heart. My mother didn't know squat about football but she knew what Penn State football had meant to me. After return- ing to the East Coast, Fran helped my wife, Carole, and I become season-tick- et holders, and we began making our weekend trips to Penn State, often stay- ing with my mother at her home in Indi- ana, Pa., before making the trek to State College on Saturday morning. We told her all about the tailgating and the fun we were having. In the summer of 1986, she was nearing 80 years old and said she wanted to see her first football game and get in on the fun. We picked the Cincinnati game, scheduled for Oct. 11, figuring the weather would be great and the oppo- nent would be a patsy. We made hotel reservations for Friday and Saturday night, and Fran was able to get us anoth- er ticket alongside our 10-yard-line seats in the lower east grandstand. She marveled at all the RVs camped out on Friday night and the massive tailgating that ensued shortly after the parking lots opened at 9 a.m. for the 12:20 kick- off. "I can't believe there are so many people here this early," she said. "It's like a big party." Although the weather turned cold, it was a sunny day and she quickly was right in the middle of everything, wan- dering near our parking spot to talk to other fans, some of them strangers even to Carole and me. Her highlight came when Fran and his wife, Charlotte, stopped by our tailgate. Naturally, he treated her like an old friend, teased her about her pain-in-the-butt Italian son who talks with his hands, and both he and Charlotte gave her a big hug. My mother talked about that day and Fran Fisher until she died in June 1997, yearning to go back and tailgate again even as her health deteriorated. I'm sure I'm not the only person who tells a story like that about Fran. A week before that Cincinnati week- end, I experienced firsthand the reach and scope of Fran Fisher's vast circle of friends. Instead of being at Penn State for the Rutgers game, Carole and I were at Disney World as media guests for the amusement park's 15th anniversary cel- ebration. Sometime in the middle of Saturday afternoon we stopped in one of the park's cocktail bars with a couple of friends and their wives from my TV news days. After we ordered, I said I wanted to make a telephone call to find out the score of the Penn State football game. This sounds so ancient nowadays with nearly instant Internet access and ubiquitous cellphones. At the time, Penn State had set up a telephone number to call and join the radio broadcast of the football games. Using one of the pay telephones back near the restrooms, I injected a number of coins into a telephone and listened to Fisher for a short time. Penn State was comfortably ahead and eventually won, 31-6. I went back to our table and told everyone the score and a couple of other details. A man sitting near us with his wife and

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