Decorated veteran Bill Goodrich pioneered state radio sports|[3/29/05]

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, March 29, 2005

This is the fifth in a series profiling the inductees to the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.

For 18 months, Bill Goodrich was silent.

The man whose voice was one of the first in the country to be heard over the airwaves, and who would go on to tell the tales of hundreds of athletes, could not speak.

Email newsletter signup

Sign up for The Vicksburg Post's free newsletters

Check which newsletters you would like to receive
  • Vicksburg News: Sent daily at 5 am
  • Vicksburg Sports: Sent daily at 10 am
  • Vicksburg Living: Sent on 15th of each month

A piece of German shrapnel had broken his jaw and nearly stole his life. For more than a year, Goodrich went about his business in silence. He recuperated, finished his time in the army and, when the wire binding his jaw was removed, made up for lost time.

For the next 50 years, Goodrich was anything but quiet. He relayed accounts of baseball, football and basketball games, early NASCAR races and almost any other sporting event he could find. And his words weren’t just reserved for the masses. Goodrich always had a kind word for friends, or a piece of advice for people breaking into the broadcast business.

“I think when my dad came back, as soon as he could open his mouth he started talking about sports. And he didn’t shut up about it for the next 38 years,” joked Page Goodrich, Bill’s son. “He loved sports, and I think he had a lot of pent-up frustrations.”

Bill Goodrich died in 1999, but his memory lives on. People still tell tales of his broadcasts of Ole Miss and Southern Miss football, and will share plenty of them on Friday when he’s posthumously inducted to the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.

“I think my dad, without question, would consider it the crowning achievement of his professional life,” Page Goodrich said. “He would have been overwhelmed to be joining the people he respected and worked with … There would have been no honor he would have cherished more.”