The passing last week of Fran Fisher – “The Voice of Penn State Football” – at age 91 has touched thousands of friends and fans from across the Nittany Nation.
Seemingly, everyone has a personal story of meeting Fran, listening to Fran on the radio, being treated kindly by the gentleman that he was.
Many of the stories about Fran since his passing on Thursday have focused on his broadcasting years and prowess. The following is a slightly different look at Fran, from a trio of dear, decades-long dear friends as well as a recent Penn State grad, who represents the scores of young reporters Fran supported, cheered on and mentored for a half-century.
They focus on, among other things, Penn State football motor homes, lunch, press conferences, morning coffee and friends. Lots and lots of friends. Here are the words from four of them:
JANE ZIMMERMAN: NO PLACE LIKE MOTOR HOME
Jane Zimmerman is a true blue Penn Stater. She was named an honorary alumna in 2002 and the university’s Fundraiser Volunteer of the Year in 2008. She and her late husband Bob were decades-long friends with Fran and his late wife Charlotte. After their spouses passed away, Jane and Fran stayed in close touch and were part-friends, part-support group.
I first met Fran in 1972. Bob had just started to run WRSC and WQWK in State College. The kids and I came up from Virginia – we hadn’t moved here yet – and I walked into the lobby of the radio station. Guess who were the first two people I saw? Joe Paterno and Fran Fisher. They were there to record some show, which I didn’t know about at the time. I was so impressed by both of them and they and their wives became dear, dear friends from that moment on.
Fran and I did some crazy things in the past, at times with Charlotte on the sidelines. I loved her dearly, just as I loved him. But…
… every so often, Fran and I would have a martini or a scotch together – along with a cigar!
… I always drove our motor home to Penn State football games because Bob couldn’t back it up. We liked to stay near where Fran’s hotel was, so we could use his shower. One day, when Penn State was playing one of those games in the Meadowlands, George (Joe’s brother and Fran’s radio broadcast partner) comes flying out of the hotel … and announced, “We can’t find a ride to the stadium. Can you take us?”
”Of course,” I said. So they both hopped into the motor home and off we went to the stadium. When we got there everyone was tailgating. Fran and George got out of the motor home and never stopped signing autographs and talking with people until almost game time. You would have thought Joe was there. We had a terrible time getting them to the broadcasting booth. Fran kept pulling George, because he knew they had to do the game. But George wanted to stay – he was having a good time.
… Fran sometimes would phone me before before his radio show with Joe with a request that I call in, because he thought a woman should ask a question. He would put me up to calling in with a dumb blonde question. And I kept on saying to Fran, “I know the answer to these questions.”
… One weekday years ago, he gave me an hour’s notice and said, “Can you bring your motor home up to the stadium in a hour?”
I said, ‘Yeah, what’s going on?’
“We have to plot out all these parking spaces and I have no idea how big to make them.”
So I went up there and we spent an afternoon driving that motor home all around Beaver Stadium, making sure there was enough room to park. If you had enough room to park your RV back then, you could thank Fran and I.
… A couple of times when he was broadcasting a Penn State basketball game at Rec Hall he’d be doing the broadcast alone. He’d wave to me in the crowd while he was on the air and motion me to come over and help him take stats. To be honest with you, I don’t think he ever used them on the air.
Fran did some amazingly wonderful things. He had such a giving heart up until they very end. Back in the early spring of this year, I was involved with a fraternity that was doing some fundraising for the Youth Service Bureau. They had a banquet at Toftrees and got Fran to be the speaker.
The night of the event comes and here’s this older man on oxygen, with his little wheelcart and all that stuff. I sat beside him at dinner and when he got up to speak to the group, you would have thought it was 20 years ago. He had the fathers and mothers of the kids from the fraternity, the townspeople and the young college kids right in the palm of his hand. He was absolutely as good as I ever heard him.
JOHN COYLE: COFFEE WITH FRAN
A member of the Penn State faculty for over four decades and now retired, Coyle was a pioneer in the university’s development into the top supply chain school in the nation. He was Penn State’s NCAA faculty representative from 1970-2000 and Penn State’s inaugural faculty rep to the Big Ten as well, from 1990-2000.
Fran has to be up in heaven and saying to Charlotte, “I don’t know why they are making all this fuss about me. In recent years, we’ve had university presidents, and famous faulty members and researchers, and legendary coaches like Gene Wettstone all pass away and not get this much attention. Bunny, I’m only a sports broadcaster. Why are they making all this fuss about me?”
And I wondered: How should that question be answered? I would answer this way. Fran was a sports broadcaster, but he was much more than that, especially in two ways:
His deep love of Penn State showed everywhere he went. I think he truly regretted for a long time that he didn’t come back after World War II and finish his degree. But when he got a chance to come back to Penn State (as a broadcaster in 1966), it was probably like a dream come true for him. He loved Penn State and he would do anything he could to make a Penn State a better place. Every day of his life I believe he bled blue and white through and through.
Of course, he was connected mostly to athletics. That’s where he spent the most of his time and that contributed to his fame. But it went deeper than that. Fran treated everyone the same way. Whether you were a janitor, a secretary, a student or a famous professor, Fran would talk with you and befriend you.
Here’s an example: When Fran was working with (former athletic director) Jim Tarman in Rec Hall, Fran would stop in the Keller Building in the morning and have a cup of coffee. Right after he started working for Tarman, Jim said to Fran one day, “How come you don’t get here at 8 o’clock? Everybody else does.”
And Fran says, “Well, I stop at Keller and have a cup of coffee.” So Jim started going over to Keller every morning and having a cup of coffee with him. I’d stop over a couple of times, and they’d be sitting at their table. People would see them at the table, grab a cup of coffee and just talk with them. It could be anybody. And it was everybody.
Fran was that kind of person. He wasn’t pretentious at all. Whatever fame he had, whatever glory he had, it didn’t impact him. He would do so much for everyone. Another example: Our first real interaction with Fran was at the Cotton Bowl after the 1971 season and we played Texas. We were in the hotel with the Penn State fans and I think Fran made friends with every single person there. He was in the bar singing with everybody, making up songs about Penn State to other tunes. He had the whole hotel – bellhops, people at the desk – eating out of the palm of his hand. That’s how he was.
WILLIE JUNGELS: FRAN AT THE PRESSERS
Willie Jungels graduated from PSU with a degree in broadcast journalism in 2014. He is a second generation Penn Stater with the news business in his blood; his grandfather Bill was the longtime sports editor of the Lancaster News. Willie was the sports director of the student radio station and just like his grandfather, a good friend of Fran’s.
In the fall of 2010 I was a wide-eyed freshman getting ready to attend my first-ever Penn State football press conference, featuring Joe Paterno. Being an 18-year-old kid new to campus, I was extremely nervous walking into the press conference and seeing guys that worked with my grandfather, who was on the Penn State beat for nearly four decades.
I ended up sitting in the back of the room with a guy named Lou Prato, who introduced me to a man that I had recognized but never met — Fran Fisher. Upon introduction we were chatting about my grandfather and the friendship they shared. From there, a new friendship was formed.
Nearly every weekly press conference after that — from my freshman through my senior year, through three head coaches — Fran and I would share a few words that made Tuesdays during the fall semester one of my favorite days during the week. I quickly learned that I was not the only one who enjoyed those couple of minutes with Fran. Almost everybody in the press room — be it a student, a veteran reporter, a member of the PR staff — came back to talk to Fran. And every person left that conversation with Fran with the same reaction: a smile on his or her face.
That first year, I made it a point to sit next to Fran and Lou, and take in those Paterno pressers as they rattled off old stories about Joe. Finally, after the fourth or fifth one, Fran leaned over and said, “Come on kid, ask him a tough questions one of these weeks.” Finally, I mustered up the courage to ask Joe a question and while it was clear that I was intimidated, I got it out. After giving back the microphone to a PR staffer I sat down. Fran offered a critique, wrapped in a compliment: “Nice job, kid. You think he was tough on you on that question, try asking him when he’s gonna hang it up.”
Throughout the last couple of days we have read what a great broadcaster Fran was and how much he loved Penn State. And while that is certainly true, what was best about Fran was his friendship that he gave so many people. He made a room light up and was able to connect with anybody regardless of their age. To know that someone as accomplished Fran cared enough about to you to compliment or joke with you meant the world to so many people.
One of my fondest memories throughout school was attending Fran’s 90th birthday party with my grandfather Bill. Conversing with Fran that day, I felt that I had known him for as long as my grandfather had. It was a day that I will never forget.
Not a lot of 20-year-old kids could say they were friends with a 90-year-old broadcasting legend. (This would be the part where Fran would say to me, “You don’t look 90.”) God willing, down the road I hope to give some students what Fran gave to me — he was not only a friend, but a teacher and mentor as well.
LOU PRATO: LUNCH WITH FRAN
Lou Prato, who knew Fran the longest of this group, is Penn State’s unofficial sports historian and the author of five books on Penn State football. The founding director of the All-Sports Museum he, with Fran, knows more about Nittany Lion football than any starting 11.
I’ve known Fran since 1966, when we first met in the Beaver Stadium radio booth. But the most enduring memory I have of him were the lunches we had together with Mike Poorman in the last five or six years. It all started casually after one of Joe Paterno’s weekly Tuesday news conferences in the stadium media room during the football season. And it wound up being a monthly special affair with one invited guest – just the four of us.
Since my retirement as director of the Penn State All-Sports Museum in 2006, every Tuesday of every fall I have sat beside Fran in the back of the media room during the head coach’s news conference. One afternoon after the news conference the three us decided to go down the hill to Damon’s and grab lunch. The next week, Neil Rudel of The Altoona Mirror, who has been covering Penn State football longer than anyone else in the media, asked to join us. He did. We started talking and agreed that everything we said should be off the record. That remained a rule, as did the fact that guests were always treated to lunch by the group and were never permitted to pay.
The next time we went to lunch, we invited someone new. And then someone new again. As the weeks went by that fall we repeated this “invitation only” lunch. After the football season was over we decided the lunches should not be. Being off the record and trusting each other and our guests, we all were honest, frank and candid.
The conversations varied depending on the guests, but Fran was always the star of the show. He was the Fran we all have seen and heard publicly, but with more wise cracks, deprecating stories about his own play-by-play years, and zingers about his two lunch pals and the guest. He kidded me by asking, “Do all you Italians talk with your hands?” And once, after Fran offered his salad to me, I ate it. I heard about that decision for the next four years.
The guest list is too long to go into and I am sure I would leave someone out. My favorite guest was Bobby Williams. He was a starting halfback on the great undefeated 1947 football team and the head high school coach in Greensburg, where Fran once lived. We just sat there and listened to history from both Bobby and Fran. Bobby had been living with his daughter in State College and not long after our lunch he passed away. The three of us felt blessed to have that time with Bobby, to hear his stories about Penn State’s history.
Now Fran is gone, too, and the lunches with “The Three Stooges,” as I called us, are gone forever, too.
The two remaining Stooges will get together for lunch in the future. Maybe Neil or professor Jack Selzer — who have may have been with us for more lunches than anyone other than Fran’s son, Jeff – or others will join us occasionally.
But it will never be the same. We have lost the star and he can’t be replaced. But I will always have the memories.
More stories & columns about Fran Fisher:
Fran Fisher’s Biggest Fans Were Bill O’Brien and James Franklin… And the Feeling Was Mutual
Fran Fisher, the ‘Voice of Penn State,’ Passes Away
Penn State Football: Franklin, Jones And Many Others Offer Thoughts On Fran Fisher’s Passing
Penn State Football: Fran Fisher Leaves Lasting Memories
Fran Fisher is 90 Today. We’re the Ones Getting Presence
