SPRINGDALE -- Inside stories of the 1960s Arkansas vs. Texas football rivalry and the birth of the American Football League were highlights at the annual induction ceremony for the Arkansas Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame.
Grant Hall, a long-time writer, broadcaster and TV host in Northwest Arkansas, and Charlie Jones, a Fort Smith native who became a national AFL, NFL and Olympics broadcaster, were inducted Wednesday. The induction ceremony for sportscaster Dick Clay and sportswriter Charlie Cromwell, the other two members of the 2024 class, was held last Friday in Jonesboro.
Jones and Clay were inducted posthumously.
Hall, 76, spent a few minutes telling personal stories that involved more than a dozen members of the audience, including former Razorback greats Jim Lindsey and Tommy Boyer.
"What was overwhelming about it to me was the list of people who are already there (in the hall of fame)," Hall said. "I think I knew 32 of the 36. ... I knew them or had met them and looked up to these people as my heroes. ... Just to be in that same group, you feel like maybe you did something right."
Hall also introduced his children, sons Jason and Scott and daughter Joanna Braswell, and his grandchildren Anna, Claire, Allie and Erin, and he saved a special shoutout for his wife, Audley.
"Four days from now it will be 46 years of married bliss," Hall said. "Without her, I'm nothing."
Jones was represented by several family members, including his son Chuck, of Sun Valley, Idaho, and daughter Julie Jones Smitherman of La Jolla, Calif.
Chuck Jones told the story of how his father finally broke through in reaching AFL creator Lamar Hunt to get started on the ground floor with that league in 1960.
After several attempts at mailing his resume and audition tapes to Hunt to try land the announcing job for the fledgling Dallas Texans, which proved unsuccessful, Jones made an audacious move.
"His brother Ira came up with the idea, 'Let's send him an alarm clock,' just to say the voice of the Dallas Texans is going to arrive at this time, 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning," Chuck Jones said.
When Jones arrived on that Saturday, Hunt's secretary looked up and said, "Oh you must be Mr. Jones coming to see Mr. Hunt."
Though Jones obviously didn't have the Texans job at that point, he landed it after talking to Hunt and went on to a highly-decorated career, which included a 30-year stint with NBC.
"I loved working with Charlie," said Randy Cross, the former NFL great and the 49th of Jones' 50 broadcast partners, in a video appearance Wednesday. "He was so proud of being from Arkansas. Almost every conversation you had, somewhere in there Fort Smith would come up. He was just very, very proud of his Arkansas roots."
Jones Smitherman said her father came to all of her high school events as the team's biggest supporter, because they were on weekdays.
"My dad always said he never worked a day in his life," she said. "Sports was everything to him and he loved it.
"He was fun. He was like the voice of God. ... I still like watching the football games and critiquing the announcers. He would have loved to be here for this."
Jones received his undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California, where he also played tennis, and a law degree from the University of Arkansas. He died in June 2008 at age 77.
Hall was born in Louisville, Ky., and moved to Arkansas at age 5 in 1953 when his dad, Dr. Andrew M. Hall, was appointed as pastor at First Baptist Church in Fayetteville, a position he held for 17 years.
He got his first position in writing as the editor of the Woodland Westerner, a junior high school newspaper, and wrote one story for the Arkansas Traveler, the University of Arkansas students newspaper, before graduating from the UA.
Hall became sports editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times in 1974, a position he held for 17 years before moving to the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas, which became the Springdale News. In 1980 he began doing sports radio shows and has been involved off and on in that capacity for 44 years.
Hall was right in the middle of some of the biggest Arkansas-Texas games during their heyday in the 1960s.
His father put a message on the sign outside of First Baptist Church prior to the 1965 game that went viral.
The sign read: "Football is only a game. Eternal things are spiritual. Nevertheless, beat Texas."
A photo of the sign was sent out on the Associated Press wire and ran in newspapers and magazines across the country.
"People sent us these photos from all over," Hall said. "I think we got letters from all 50 states where they had seen that picture."
The Razorbacks beat Texas 27-24 in that game.
Four years later, Hall was in the middle of the leadup to the Big Shootout against Texas, as Arkansas Coach Frank Broyles was hosting the Reverend Billy Graham prior to the game.
Hall said Broyles called his father and said, "Andy, I've got Billy Graham at my house and I don't know what to do with him. I've got to get ready for a game. Can you help me?"
Grant Hall accompanied his father to Broyles' house to help entertain Graham and give Broyles time to concentrate on the game.
The game, also attended by sitting President Richard Nixon, was won 15-14 by Texas. Many people still refer to it as the "Game of the Century" as it featured No. 2 Arkansas hosting No. 1 Texas in a game moved to Dec. 6 by ABC in the 100th year of college football. The game received a Nielsen rating of 52.1, meaning more than half the TV sets in use in the country were tuned in to the game. That remains the highest TV rating in American football history.
Clay Henry, the longtime publisher of Hawgs Illustrated, served as a host at both of the induction ceremonies.
"If you played sports in Northeast Arkansas, Dick Clay or Charlie Cromwell touched your life," Henry told the audience in Jonesboro last Friday, according to the Jonesboro Sun.
Cromwell, 72, grew up in Pine Bluff and earned a degree in radio and television from Arkansas State in 1974. He was employed at radio stations in Jonesboro and Pine Bluff before taking a job at the Jonesboro Sun, where he served as sports editor for 15 years.
"I really am sad that Dick Clay could not be here," Cromwell said at his ceremony, per the Jonesboro Sun. "We worked together a lot and traveled together a lot. He was Channel 8 sports."
Clay, who died at age 78 in 2014, was sports director at KAIT-TV from 1970-98 and then hosted "Dick Clay Sports Magazine" on KAIT for several years after that.
