Argus-Leader from Sioux Falls, South Dakota • Page 84

2 Health Sports Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, S.D. Sunday, April 28, 1985 vV.r V-VV vi SJ II i -i Hf 'j 'nrryTT I MM- Jm. Sportscaster started at the top When Jim Burt decided in December of 1937 that the time had come for him to choose a life's occupation, he went right to the top for advice. He wrote a former sportscaster at WHO in Des Moines, who had moved to Hollywood. A month later, a reply came to Melcher, Iowa, carrying a Los Angeles postmark: "Friend James: "My advice to you regarding to getting in radio is to go to several small stations and ask tor an audition tor it is far easier to get a place with a small station as the larger stations keep taking the good announcers from them so you see the larger stations are always wanting the experienced announcers so it is best to try the small stations.

No the announcer does not write his own script but he is often called on to ad lib. If you ever happen to be in Davenport, Iowa, my brother J. Neil Reagan is program director of that station (WOC) you might talk with him and he can give you more information than I can by my mail. "Best wishes. "Ronald Reagan" Jim Burt has been covering Sioux Empire sports since KELO began nnintS I hpllPVP Rnrt sairt loo una hacahall oamos nn VRH points I believe," Burt said league baseball on WHO." its television operation May 19, 1953.

games classes, plus practical work at KRNT in Des Moines." World War II intervened between his Drake experience and the application of it. Burt was drafted in 1941 and served in the Army, most of the time in San Francisco, until he was discharged in December, 1945. While in the service, he met his wife, Olive, who died of cancer last May 9. She was an ex-school teacher from Bay City, who was working for the Army. They were married Nov.

18, 1944, by a Presbyterian chaplain, in the Fort Mason chapel overlooking San Francisco Bay. Their first post-Army home was Minneapolis, while Burt used the GI Bill as a charter-class student at Brown Radio School. In school, on a fire escape outside a rear window, the bud-stage sportscaster spent many an evening broadcasting into thin air Minneapolis Millers' baseball games from above the centerfield fence of old Nicollet Park. "After three months of a 33-week course, I sent out five audition Burt See 3 By JOHN EGAN Argus Leader Staff Jim Burt would like to put to rest the rumor. He did not come to Sioux Falls by wagon train.

Still, he accepts the fact that he's a pioneer. Burt, 66, who helped put KELO's television operation on the air on May 19, 1953, landed on Phillips Avenue as a rookie radio broadcaster almost 38 years ago. He's been talking to the Sioux Empire ever since. Basketball was the sideline of his youth. Fittingly, it is the sport most closely associated with him across South Dakota.

"The first play by play I did on KELO radio was in March of 1948," Burt said. "It was the Class A basketball tournament in Aberdeen when Mitchell beat Sturgis in the finals. "I remember hauling a 120-pound wire recorder down to the locker room to talk to Joe Quintal, the winning coach. He didn't want to be interviewed, but we finally got it done. "I broadcast every state tournament, Class A and Class from then until we quit doing the television of them a few years ago.

And I still have the score sheets from almost every game I did, radio or television." The face which has graced television screens in KELO's tri-state coverage area for 32 years is of Scotch-Irish and Welsh extraction. His parents, Jim and Lavina Burt, raised their only child in Melcher, Iowa, a coal-mining railroad town 35 miles southeast of Des Moines, at midpoint on the Minneapolis-Kansas City leg of the Rock Island Line. Burt was a curly haired, 5-foot-10 guard who wore No. 7 for the maroon and white of Melcher High School as a senior in 1936. His pet two-handed set shot from the left wing helped Melcher make a charge at a state-tournament berth that spring.

"I can remember running out to a hallway fountain to get a drink of water during the district tournament, and the gym was packed. Guys were standing at the end lines with money in their hands, betting. We finally got beat by Albia in the sectional, at Ottumwa, by just two Baseball also intruded upon Burt's boyhood. "My dad was a big fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates. I recall it being about 192 degrees in the house in the summer, and my dad sitting there, bent over, with his ear to a radio listening to the Pirates when they played the Cubs.

"When we were both seniors in high school, I got a chance to play against Bob Feller. His hometown, Van Meter, was just west of Des Moines and we played in a sectional tournament. I got a scratch single over shortstop off him. "His catcher had about four sponges in his mitt. It wasn't all that long after that, Feller was already with the Cleveland Indians," Burt said.

Radio pulled alongside athletics in Burt's daydreams when he was 15. "The summer before I was a freshman in high school, I watched WHO of Des Moines do a broadcast from a Fourth of July celebration. After that I paid a lot of attention to the radio. "I really enjoyed listening to Dutch Reagan, who gave the sports news and did re-creations of major- The "Dutch" gave way to Ronnie, and then Ronald, of course. Reagan's journey led to Hollywood and the movies, then to the White House.

Burt followed those developments with particular interest. The reason was a letter which was tucked away in his memorabilia storehouse. "After high school, I was working seven nights and Thursday afternoon for $12.50 a week as a projectionist in the theater in Melcher," he said. "I idolized Reagan kind of, and wrote him to ask how to get started in radio. "I have kept the hand-written letter he sent me all these years, I don't really know why.

Anyway, he told me to talk to his brother, Neil 'Moon Reagan, at WOC in Davenport, Iowa. Burt didn't make the second contact. Instead, he saw an advertisement of a summer radio school that Drake University had scheduled. The cost was 200. "A two-pants suit then cost $25, so you can imagine how big that 200 bucks seemed.

But I saved for it, and went during the summer of 1940. The course consisted of Jim Burt At the microphone in 1947 Profile Name: Jim Burt. Date of birth: June 22, 1918. Hometown: Melcher, Iowa. Education: Drake University radio classes, summer of 1940; Brown Radio School, Minneapolis, summer of 1946.

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