Courtesy St. Louis Post Dispatch

(January 30, 2009) Joe May, the voice of high school football and basketball in the Metro East area for decades, was a throwback to an era when equipment was primitive, the working conditions at times vile.

But May, who died of a heart attack last weekend at age 67, always persevered. Tom Calhoun, the public address announcer at Blues home games who also does promotional spots for KSLG (1380 AM), was just out of school in the early '70s when he was hired at Belleville powerhouse station WIBV. May was sports director.

"The first thing I think of when I think of Joe is how he was so into high school and college sports in southwestern Illinois and had such a passion for the people involved and the programs at the various schools,'' Calhoun said. "They all had him as a hero back in the days when high school sports were still prominent on the radio.''

May, who is in the Illinois High School Coaches Association Broadcasters Hall of Fame, probably is best-known throughout the region as the host of the "Whitey Herzog Show" that aired on cable TV in the early 1980s. But that's not how he'll be best remembered.

"In those days in the '70s and '80s, he was 'the man' for high school sports,'' Calhoun said. "Everybody wanted to be playing the game Joe May was broadcasting. He was larger than life as far as high school sports were concerned.''