Posted: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:00 am
PAUL J. WEBER
Associated Press Writer
In 42 seasons as the familiar voice of the Port Neches-Groves football team, James “Tip” Durham has missed only two games: when his mother died, and then when his father died.
At 73, Durham has delivered through Indian Stadium’s public address system the vital facts from virtually every down of Port Neches-Groves football since 1964. Players who heard Durham announce their names in the 1970s, including current Indians coach Mark Burnett, now hear him bellow the names of their sons.
While there are no official records of which high school announcers have worked the longest in Texas, Port Neches-Groves fans safely assume Durham owns the most longevity in Southeast Texas.
The smooth, deep-voiced retiree has been as much an audible fixture as the band during hundreds of Friday nights in Port Neches, nestled just south of Beaumont near the Louisiana border. He has no plans of leaving the “Reservation,” as the home field is known, anytime soon.
“I figured I’d do it as long as they’d let me,” said Durham, a Port Neches-Groves graduate. “That’s turned out to be a long time. I’ve never really thought about quitting.”
He can still describe plays from three decades ago and name the seven head coaches he’s outlasted from the press box. That list includes former Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips, who led the Indians for two seasons in the 1960s.
Durham has announced games at nearly every landmark stadium in the state, including Texas Stadium, where he saw 40,000 fans for the 1977 state final against Plano. He’s also been in the booth at the Astrodome, Kyle Field and, as recently as this season, Reliant Stadium for the Indians’ season opener.
He’s watched offenses evolve from the Wishbone to the spread, a career spanning so long that he now finds the grandchildren of his former teammates on rosters. Burnett’s son, Drew, is the quarterback of the Indians and the grandson of Jimmy Burnett, who played with Durham in the late 1940s.
“I sometimes try to think what might make him stop for one reason or another,” said Durham’s son, James, who also played at Port Neches-Groves in the 1990s. “I still haven’t thought of one.”
Durham hardly imagined such longevity when, as a young teacher at Groves Junior High in the early 1960s, his principal asked him to announce football games because he didn’t want to do it any longer. Durham was a likely choice for the job: after school, his voice was already being heard across the city as a part-time disc jockey for a country music station.
It wasn’t long after that Durham was doing varsity football games. That’s where he coined his trademark phrase, “Bonsoir, mes amies. Laiseez les bon temps roulet!” _ or, “Good evening, friends. Let the good times roll!” He learned it from a school maintenance man as a child after moving from East Texas, when he says he was so naive to Louisiana culture that he didn’t “even know what rice and gravy was.”
Other hallmarks of a Durham-announced game are never hearing the specific penalty committed (“The fans can decide what they think,” he said), excessive emphasis for the home team or drawing out syllables in words. Instead, first downs and touchdowns are said in the same tenor for the Indians as their opponents.
“I can’t show prejudice when the game is going on. There are two teams out there,” he said. “No one’s ever complained about my voice yet.”
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Read more: TEXAS TRADITIONS: Voice of Port Neches-Groves still going strong – MRT.com: Importhttp://www.mrt.com/import/article_123cc479-7cae-54f4-ac7b-7bdbe863e686.h…
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