Tom and Greg O'Connor, who combined have broadcast on Jackson's airwaves for more than 55 years, named winners of 2010 Al Cotton Award (original) (raw)

WEB_tomandgregoconnor.jpgCitizen Patriot file photoGreg, left, and Tom O'Connor, shown in 1987, are the winners of the 2010 Al Cotton Award, given by the Citizen Patriot staff to a person or people who have made a significant contribution to sports in Jackson.

Whether it’s from a cozy press box, a scorer’s table at courtside or from a makeshift press table behind the cheerleaders in the corner of an antiquated gymnasium, Tom and Greg O’Connor have been bringing local sports to Jackson radio for 56 years.

Tom, known to his listeners as TOC, was the sports voice of Jackson from 1954 until his death in 1987.

His son, GOC, has kept the tradition alive since 1983.

The two pioneers of Jackson media, for their dedication to promoting local sports and making memories for listeners and athletes alike, are the winners of the 2010 Al Cotton Award.

The Citizen Patriot sports department presents the award, named in honor of the newspaper’s former sports editor, annually to a person who has made a significant contribution to sports in Jackson and made it “a better place to play.”

The roots of TOC

Born George Hesslau and college-educated in Baltimore, Tom took his on-air name to honor his best friend, named Tom O’Connor, who was killed in World War II. Greg, the oldest of seven children, said it was only natural that he take the O’Connor radio name as well.

“My dad came to Jackson in ’54 after he had been in radio for four or five years,” Greg said.

“He was doing Keokuk Kernels minor-league baseball in Keokuk, Iowa.”

Greg was born in 1952 in Mason City, Iowa.

“He started in baseball and met Roger Maris, who was playing for Keokuk,” Greg said. “They were buddies for about a year.”

When Tom received and accepted a job offer from radio station WIBM in Jackson, he brought with him his love of the New York Yankees and Notre Dame. One of Tom’s sports duties for WIBM from 1955-58 was re-creating the Major League Baseball game of the day using sound effects and wire service play-by-play reports.

“When Tom arrived here in the early 1950s, sports coverage by the radio stations was minimal,” wrote the late sports writer John O’Connell in a 1987 Citizen Patriot column. “TOC immediately changed that and is the major reason today that local athletic events are aired by radio stations in town.”

tomoconnor.jpgCitizen Patriot file photoTom O'Connor ruled the airwaves from 1954 until his death in 1987.

TOC speaking

“My first memories of going to games were when my dad would take me to the old Jackson High School gym for JCC basketball,” Greg said. “They had a string of teams at JCC from the early to mid-’60s that were just phenomenal. I used to love that.

“They would seat us at a little table right above the exit doorway in that old gym. I’d sit there and keep score.”

Two games in particular stand out from his time sharing a press table with his father, including one from the mid-’60s and one from the ‘70s.

“I remember one night when River Rouge came into town to play St. John’s,” Greg said. “That’s got to be one of the most incredible nights of all-time in that gym. Jus Perticone was the coach, and Loften Greene was coaching River Rouge.

“They played in that little Jackson Catholic Middle School gym. You couldn’t put another person in there.”

TOC and GOC were also sharing a press table for the 1974 Class B district boys basketball championship game between Lumen Christi and Albion. Lumen Christi came into that game with a 16-6 record, while Albion was 20-1 and a favorite to go all the way.

Lumen Christi, however, came away with a 55-52 win in a game that was close throughout. That game also featured one of the uglier incidents in area sports history.

The Citizen Patriot reported in its March 10, 1974 edition that, “The game was marred by several injuries and numerous fights which brought the County Sheriff’s Department to the aid of the Summit Township officers.

“Also on hand for the riot,” the report continued, “were troopers from the Jackson Post and officers from Grass Lake, Leoni, Blackman and City departments. Six persons were arrested, including a 14-year-old Abion youth charged with carrying a concealed weapon.”

TOC and GOC were there.

“I don’t think you’ll ever see more people in a building,” Greg said. “Lumen had a decent team but had no right to beat them. Albion had Clarence Jackson and was just phenomenal that season. After that one, everything just broke loose. The place erupted into a riot. It was just a war. Fights everywhere. Men, women, farm animals.”

MAKING (AIR)WAVES

Radio personalities Tom O’Connor and Greg O’Connor have combined for 56 years of broadcasting and promoting local sports and are the winners of the 2010 Al Cotton Award for helping make Jackson “a better place to play.”

Tom O’Connor file

Greg O’Connor file

Welcome to the big time

Then there were the road trips to colleges in the mid-‘60s, including ones that Tom and Greg made to South Bend, Ind., to cover football games between Michigan State and Notre Dame.

“My dad used to sneak me into the Notre Dame football press box,” Greg said. “You had to be 18 to get in, and I was about 15.

“At Notre Dame, they had these little outhouses on top of the press box for the radio stations from out of town. It was really horrid, those little wooden sheds. I remember it vividly because they would sneak me in there. We’d be in an elevator, and I’m hiding amongst about 12 guys.”

Greg never had to hide when keeping stats for his dad at area gymnasiums.

“I was probably a sophomore or a junior in high school when I would go with him to do stats,” Greg said. “Dad would do some of the basketball games by himself. Most of the football games, he would have help. Dad was like me. He had three or four different radio partners over the years.”

For basketball, though, it was often just TOC and his oldest son.

“I would go with him, and eventually he would let me do play-by-play for the third quarter,” Greg said. “I was still in high school.”

John Manser, a boyhood friend, former broadcast partner of Greg’s and a regular on the 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday show on WIBM, said he remembers watching Greg learn the ropes.

“Tom had been preparing Greg to eventually get on the air and do some play-by-play,” Manser said. “Tom gave the microphone to him one night at Parkside, and I was there, and it was a passing of the torch, so to speak. In my mind’s eye, I’ll never forget it.”

From Parkside to MSU

Tom covered Michigan State football for WIBM though much of the ’60s. During his career, he also broadcast Michigan football.

His radio partner for many of those MSU years in the 1960s was former Parkside athletic director Dennis Kiley, who came to Parkside in 1963.

Kiley said Tom was a true professional in how he approached a broadcast, whether it was Michigan State football or a run-of-the-mill Tuesday night regular-season high school boys basketball game at Parkside.

“Tom would come out and do a lot of our basketball and football games,” Kiley said. “He was always very punctual and would make sure he had all the names and information right. He was always a big booster to our program.”

Kiley still listens to Greg.

“You can listen to Greg today, and you can hear some of Tom,” Kiley said. “Tom might not have been as, well, hyper as Greg sometimes gets, but he could get excited about things.

“He was a lot of fun and a great guy to travel with. Greg and Tom have done a great job. A lot of communities don’t have the luxury of having guys like that doing games on the radio to support the local high schools.”

TOC did it all

In addition to covering the high schools, colleges and even broadcasting the race of the night from Jackson Harness Raceway, Tom tried his hand at Summit-Leoni cable access television later in his career.

“He did all sorts of stuff for them,” Greg said. “He did some softball, did some boxing. I have one of the old boxing tapes. It was almost silly. He was there covering it like it was the heavyweight championship of the world.”

Tom’s later years in sports broadcasting included sports commentaries and an evening sports news show on WKHM. He would also broadcast football and basketball games for Summit-Leoni.

Among his final broadcasts was a Class D boys basketball quarterfinal between Concord and Covert in March 1987, just weeks before his death of a heart attack April 27 at the age of 65.

“TOC was a pioneer of sports broadcasting in Jackson,” O’Connell wrote after Tom’s death. “TOC was proud to live in Jackson. TOC was proud that one of his sons, Greg, followed him into the sports announcing profession.”

Second generation

Greg attended St. Mary’s grade school, Parkside High School and Jackson Community College before making a pit stop at Michigan State University.

“I went to State in ’78, and I was in the radio division,” Greg said. “I was there a couple months. I had a radio show up there on Sundays.

“One day, I ran across a listing of jobs, and there was one for a sportscaster in Cheboygan. I sent that fateful tape, not thinking twice about it. The guy up there must have really been hurting because he called me and offered me a job for something like $700 a month.”

It was a career fork in the road.

“I had to decide whether I should try this or whether I should stay in school,” Greg said. “I went up there for five years. I was working. It was a lot of hours, not a lot of sleep.”

In that respect, not a lot has changed. In Cheboygan, Greg was the voice of a high school football team that strung together 44 consecutive wins.

One night in Cheboygan, Greg received a call that would soon change the face of Jackson radio.

“My dad told me they were looking for someone at WKHM, and he threw a tape on this guy’s desk right out of nowhere,” Greg said. “Then, I got a call saying they had a job here. They were looking for a sports director.

“I said, ‘What time do you want me to be there?’ ”

WEB_gregoconnor.jpgCitizen Patriot | Katie RauschGreg O'Connor, left, pictured with broadcast partner Tom Ratchford, arrived on the air in Jackson 1983.

'Because he loves it'

Greg arrived on the air in Jackson as the sports director at WKHM in 1983. His dad had been at WKHM since moving from WIBM three years earlier.

Tom was no longer doing radio play-by-play for the radio, but he was doing nightly sports commentary on the radio and brodcasting games for Summit-Leoni Cable TV. GOC and TOC did not work high school games together in the ‘80s, but their paths would cross if they happened to be covering the same game for their respective media outlets.

He was lured to upstart WJKN in 1995 and remained there until that station shut down in September of 2000. That left not only WJKN silent, but it left Greg unemployed for two weeks before Jackson Radio Works Inc. owners Bruce and Sue Goldsen brought Greg back to the Jackson airwaves.

Greg was hired back to host a morning radio show and a short-lived two-hour afternoon sports show for WKHM. That sports show later became the noon-to-1 p.m. local sports talk show that he hosts on WIBM today.

Today, Greg holds down the 6 a.m.-10 a.m. slot at WKHM and slides over to WIBM across the hall at the Jackson Radio Works offices on Glenshire Blvd. in Summit Township for his noon show.

Greg also hosts a weekly Saturday morning sports roundtable with co-hosts Tom Ratchford and Manser. On top of everything else, he also volunteers his time as an announcer for junior varsity, freshman and even middle school events.

“The Saturday show, anything can be said, and it usually is,” Greg said. “I’ve laughed until tears were everywhere, and I couldn’t talk, and I’d have to leave the room.

“It could have been over just something silly, maybe some reference to the Munsters or something.”

Ratchford, a math teacher at Jackson High School and a former football and track coach, has been Greg’s on-air partner for basketball and football broadcasts for more than a decade. Ratchford marvels at some of the long days Greg will put in so that he can cover the locals at night.

“(One week), we had games Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night,” Ratchford said. “He is getting to the station at 4 a.m. to get ready for his morning show, and we’re not getting back from our games until maybe 11 o’clock at night.

“He does it because he loves it. He absolutely loves it. He very rarely takes time off. The station practically makes him take time off. He just loves being behind the mike.”

Beyond Plan C

He’s behind the mike often, with his morning show and local sports call-in show keeping him in the studio for much of the morning.

By late afternoon, if it’s a game night, it’s time to start packing up. Then, it’s on to the gym or football field to make sure those connections back to the station are working.

“The days are long, and you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t love it,” Greg said. “I just function on no sleep. I don’t do much on the weekend unless there’s some kind of Saturday game.”

Most nights, Greg has a story to tell. Usually, it’s something that happened on the court, but it can also be a behind-the-scenes hurdle that kept things interesting. Any of his on-air partners for high school coverage, which have included Ken Dillon, Manser, Jim Frounfelker, Coley Johnson, Tim Hoffman, Tom Ratchford and a host of special guests.

It all comes with the territory when local radio that once relied on phone lines now uses cell phones or wireless Internet using the latest web service, Skype, to get that signal from the game to the station to the radio.

“The other night, Skype wouldn’t work,” Greg said. “We had to go to a cell phone that sounded like it was coming from the Soviet Union.

“We always have plan A, B and C, and we were down to Plan C-and-a-half for our game at Grand Ledge earlier this month. But we got it on the air.”

Tom said in a 1987 Citizen Patriot article that he was never sure that Greg would be able to broadcast basketball.

“I often wondered if he could do basketball,” Tom said. “I didn’t know if he could talk fast enough.”

'In his DNA'

Manser was one year behind Greg in school at St. Mary’s, and the two friends grew up in the same neighborhood.

“Greg has always had a knack for saying the most simple things in a witty way,” Manser said. “And having known him almost my whole life, there’s a lot of times that I know what he’s going to say.

“He dad was witty like that, too. He might have even been more so. Greg is a chip off the old block.”

Therese, Greg’s wife, said her husband found his calling.

“The guy is as passionate as they come when it comes to the local sports and supporting them,” Therese said. “I’m glad that’s his job because he’d probably be attending all those events regardless.”

Therese knew Greg’s father for three years before he died.

“Greg is a guy who has truly found his passion in life,” Therese said. “He doesn’t look at what he does as work. Sure, there are days that are ups and downs, but this guy loves his work. I can’t imagine him doing anything else.

“I think it was just a gene from his dad. Radio and local sports are in his DNA.”

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