By Mickey Furfari
The Dominion News
Reprinted by permission, Jan. 23, 1966 

What happened to him as a navigator on a B-17 bomber during World War II might have plotted the course Leo W. Fleming Jr. was to follow as a career.

To West Virginians everywhere, he’s known simply as Jack Fleming or as the “Voice of the Mountaineers.”

To those French folk who came running out of Chateau Thierry to a vineyard atop a hillside, he was an American airman who had bailed out of a troubled ship.

It was the 23rd-and last-bombing mission for the young second lieutenant from his bomber group’s base in England to Frankfurt in Germany.

This September day in 1944 the B-17 Fleming was helping to fly had two engines knocked out by enemy fire and he and his parachute barely made it back to friendly lines.

As he landed in the vineyard overlooking that famous French village, however, Fleming drove a stake into his mouth. Result: Cut lip, loss of upper front teeth, broken jaw, and a variety of facial abrasions.

A Bloody Mess

“I was a mess,” he recalls.  “I thought I was going to die but, actually, I was not mortally wounded.”

His rescuers helped him to a field hospital which, in turn, had him flown back to England where he remained hospitalized until January 1945.

Then, as he was about to return to combat, Fleming developed hepatitis and returned to the States for convalescence.

He wound up at White Sulphur Springs, in his native state, where the swanky Greenbrier Hotel had been converted to Ashford General Hospital for military use.  It was there that the Morgantown native, whose accountant father wanted him to study engineering, first got the broadcasting bug.

Before entering military service, he had enrolled in pre-engineering at the University and then switched to journalism.  He recalls liking a speech and radio course he took at that time with Don Knotts, the TV-movie star.

With this brief background and urging by a couple of friends, Fleming welcomed the opportunity to cheer up other patients at the military hospital.

Lt. Harry Adams, former WVU cheerleader, happened to be the recreation officer there and Miss Irene Spitz, a Morgantown native, was with the Red Cross chapter.

“I worked with them conducting quiz shows in the wards and giving periodic news reports and playing records over the public address throughout the hospital,” Fleming says.

From that makeshift start during the early months of 1945 up to the present time, he has developed into one of the nations foremost and busiest sportscasters.

He has broadcast nearly 1,000 games in football and basketball, pro as well as college and high school, along with untold dozens of boy baseball and other events.

Those included an estimated 425 basketball and 170 football games involving WVU teams; some 100 Pittsburgh Steelers pro games since 1958, and 78 Pittsburgh Rens basketball games in 1961-62.

Enjoys Travel

“I don’t mind traveling,” Fleming says, “I enjoy it."

It is a good thing he does, for his assignments have taken him hundreds of thousands of miles via almost every conceivable mode of transportation.

In his Pittsburgh work, even the home games are “on the road” for this 42- year-old father of two.

Born in 1923 just a stone’s throw from Mountaineer Field, Fleming lived on the Sunnyside of town until he was old enough to start school.

“I remember sitting with my mother in front of an upstairs window and looking out into the Stadium where WVU was playing football,” he recalls.

Most of his boyhood was spent in other sections and he completed all of his pre-college schooling locally with graduation from Morgantown High in 1941.

He served in the Air Force from 1942 to October of 1945, after which he returned to Morgantown and immediately became associated with Radio Station WAJR.

Work, Study

Resumption of his WVU studies followed in February 1946, along with his radio job, and he completed work for his bachelor of arts degree in speech in the summer of 1948.

For three years he earned a reputation as Jack “No Breakfast” Fleming, doing the early- morning show of music and news.

His first sports broadcasting was in the role of “color” man for Sid Goldberg, who was filling in for Charlie Snowden in the fall of 1945.

Fleming also helped Snowden after his return in 1946, then was given a trail on his own in the winter of 1947 - an assignment to broadcast a Morgantown-Elkins high school basketball game.

That summer he also did the play-by-play of Morgantown’s State American Legion junior baseball championship conquest of Parkersburg.

Now Fleming was ready to take over the WVU football and basketball network, beginning with the fall of 1947.  Except for the years of 1960 and 1961, he has been the “Voice of the Mountaineers” since.

He is manager as well as sports director of station WAJR and has been honored three times as State Sportscaster of the Year.

Fleming, who resides at 377 Jacobs Drive, also is a former member of City Council and remains active in local civic and business affairs.

As one admittedly “always interested in athletics,” he organized intramural and industrial teams in basketball and softball annually from junior high through college.

Fleming served as sports editor of the Red and Blue Journal in high school and of the Daily Athenaeum in college.

He also found time to do some football officiating in area high school circles ... and got paid for it.  On some occasions he even tried his hand-and-toot as basketball officiating.

 Family Fans

Fleming married Glenna Plunkett of Greenbrier County on Aug. 19, 1946, while both were attending the University.  They have two children, Sandy, 16, and Nancy, 14.

“They’re all good Mountaineer fans,” Jack admits.

He confesses that he himself might sound like a fan at times, too, when broadcasting WVU games.

"I strive for accuracy,” he explains. “But I also strive to entertain ... make it as colorful as possible ... because you can’t lose sight of the fact it is a show.”

“So I try to interpret from the fan’s standpoint when doing WVU games.”

In defense of possible criticism, Fleming points out that he mentions officiating on occasion because it has become increasingly vital over the last years, especially in basketball.

“When it is seemingly hurting your team,” he reasons, “you have an obligation to let others know. Otherwise, they are not getting a clear picture of the game.”

Basketball is his favorite sport to broadcast and many observers believe he has no equal in describing this sport.

“The game is so fast you don’t have to fill in as much as you do in football or baseball,” Fleming notes.  It’s just a matter of developing the technique to do it.”

He tries to “keep the ball located” for his listeners -- to create a picture in the fan’s mind as he would see it- rather than delve on theory or sidelights.

Fleming rates baseball as the toughest sport to broadcast because “you have a lot of time to fill and must develop things to talk about.”

In basketball, there isn’t time to recap plays.

Football has become the dominant sport in broadcasting down through the years, and television has tended to change techniques governing description of its games.

TV has yet to affect basketball so greatly.

Give Fleming a place “where I can see the game” and he’ll manage to do his work carefree, but he says facilities have improved 1,000 percent since “the old days.”

“I used to work in the stands with fans all around me,” he explains. “And we’ve worked from such spots as the roof of a station wagon, school windows and rooftops and even on the sidelines.”

Fleming ranks the football broadcasting facilities in Mountaineer Field’s new $165,000 Press Box as the best in America.

Likes It High

For basketball, he prefers the higher perches ... like the roof- nest at Blacksburg, Va., or one of those at Raleigh, N.C.

“I keep individual scoring as well as a running score of the game,” Fleming explains, “and the higher I am the less head movement is necessary.  I just use my eyes.”

He also serves as his own engineer for WVU basketball games away from home, but not even an engineer could have spared him the biggest technical trouble of his broadcasting career.

It was the second half “blackout” of a Milwaukee Classic game last month, forcing him to finish the broadcast via telephone.

Someone inadvertently had kicked the line loose inside the arena and not until some 11 minutes had elapsed was Fleming back in business.

“It took me by surprise,” he says.  “We’ve had line trouble before but never this bad.  Hereafter, though, we’re prepared to go right to the ‘phone without much delay.”

Among more pleasant memories, he cherishes WVU’s 100-75 victory over previously unbeaten New York U. in Madison Square Garden in 1952 and the 17-2 drought-ending football victory over Pitt in 1947 at Pittsburgh. 

Fleming became so excited doing the latter that he went off the air without realizing that the hated Panthers had been awarded a safety.  He had the final score 17-0. 

An obviously drunken fan poked his fist into the radio booth that day and struck Vic Peelish, former WVU player who was helping Fleming spot. 

On another rowdy occasion Jack himself got into a debate with a one-eyed Washington & Jefferson fan during a basketball game at Washington, Pa., and was whacked hard on the head. 

“He waited until I got busy, he hit me hard as he could, then took off running,” Fleming recalls. 

This happened the same night a WVU manager forgot the players shoes and the game had to be delayed an hour until someone drove speedily to deliver them. 

Happier was the verbal jockeying Fleming had with a Davidson fan during the Southern Conference tournament last year at Charlotte, N.C.

“He sat behind me, reached a peak pitch during our game with Davidson, then developed warm admiration for the upsetters of his favorite team and cheered for them the next night,” Fleming relates.

The Davidson man saw Jack in Charlotte earlier this month and said that he requested the same seat behind the WVU broadcaster for this years tourney.

Because of occasional overlapping assignments, Fleming has had some awfully tiresome travel. 

Example: After a WVU game at Williamsburg, Va., he drove to Richmond to catch a plane for New York’s LaGuardia Field.  There he took a helicopter to Kennedy International for a jet to Chicago, where he met other members of the Steeler broadcasting crew and grabbed another jet for San Francisco.

He arrived there at 5:30 A.M. Sunday, or 13 ½ hours after he had left Williamsburg, and caught a few hours of sleep before going on the air with the Steeler-49er game that afternoon.

Another rush-rush-rush trip of 2 years ago stands out in his memory.

Fleming left here by bus Friday for Pittsburgh, from where he flew to Greenville, S.C., with the WVU basketballers for a Saturday night game there.

He left Greenville shortly after the game by plane for Charlotte, where he checked into the airport motel and rested until 5:30 A.M.  From there he flew to Philadelphia, thence to Pittsburgh to broadcast a Steeler game that afternoon. 

Back to South

Back to Greater Pittsburgh Airport he went Sunday evening, changed back into lighter garb, and flew to Charleston, S.C., via Charlotte in time to do WVU’s game at the Citadel Monday night. 

As the man says, though, he enjoys travel.