He walked into my office at WMKC-FM in Oshkosh, dressed neatly, hair
combed, shoes shined, carrying his resume and an audition tape. T. Michael
Sullivan, hometown Edina, MN, BS from Swarthmore College.
I invited him to take a seat while I read his resume in
silence. The radio station had just decided to add a new overnight shift, and I
was looking for a DJ to fill that slot. The graveyard shift. 12 midnight until
5:30 AM. I was the Program Director. It was the early '70's.
Mike sat quietly as I read through his resume. Finally, I set
the resume down and looked him in the eye. “You’re hired,” I said. “Really??” “Yes.”
“But you haven’t even listened to my audition tape.” “I didn’t need to. You’re
hired.”
At this point, he probably wondered what kind of lunatic
outfit he’d applied at. Who hires a radio announcer without even listening to
their audition tape? He had a quizzical look on his face. I said, “It says here
that you were born on May 31st in 1949. Is that correct?” “Yes.” “So
was I. You’re hired.”
So began a long friendship that continued for decades. I
told Mike I couldn’t possibly go wrong by hiring someone born on the same day
as me.
This past Monday, Mike Sullivan passed away after a brief
battle with leukemia. I was saddened and stunned as I read the obit and then
watched a brief news clip from an Eau Claire TV station eulogizing Mike as a
local legend.
Mike and I broadcast dozens of sports events together. We became roommates when Jerry Burke moved out of our apartment to take his dream job as a news anchor at Channel 2 in Green Bay. Mike moved in with me.
Mike stepped into Jerry’s job as News Director at the radio
station. That meant we were doing the station’s morning show together, every
weekday from 5:30 to 9 AM. And we did all the station’s live sports
broadcasting.
In the photo above, you see Mike talking and me keeping
score and making color comments. It started the other way around, with me doing
the play-by-play and Mike doing the commentary. But Mike’s talent for sports
announcing so exceeded mine, that I knew after only a few broadcasts that he
should do the majority of the talking – the play-by-play – and I’d chime in
with observations.
Mike became a legendary sports broadcaster in Eau Claire,
where he’d moved to be closer to his girlfriend, Kris, who became Mike’s wife.
Mike honored me by asking me to be best man at his wedding. During the three
years we lived and worked together at WMKC-FM, we had a ball.
But it was clear that he was madly in love with Kris, and
the long commute between Oshkosh and Eau Claire to visit her became too much to
deal with. He applied for a job at WBIZ AM/FM in Eau Claire and was hired
immediately.
For nearly five decades, Mike broadcast just about every
high school and college sports event in that area: football, basketball,
hockey, baseball – you name it, and if it was a sports event, he was there to
broadcast it live. He was fantastically talented. He could easily have moved to
a career doing national network sports broadcasting, but he loved high school
and college sports too much to make the move.
He was elected to the Wisconsin Broadcasters Hall of Fame a
few years ago. He’s in every high school and college Hall of Fame in the
Chippewa Valley. The press box at Hobbs Ice Arena in Eau Claire is now the Mike
Sullivan Press Box. Mike did literally hundreds of live hockey games there.
Rest in Peace, T. Michael Sullivan. You were truly one of
the great ones.
