The "Voice of the Sooners” from 1961-1972, then from 1991 to now, will retire as OU's football and basketball play-by-play man after the school year.

Barry became the Sooners' play-by-play voice in 1961 and held the position until 1972 when OU radio rights changed. Barry called University of Tulsa basketball games during the 1973-74 season, then football and men's basketball games for Oklahoma State from 1973 to 1990.

He was hired back to OU in 1991, and has held the position ever since.

Barry spoke with The Oklahoman about how a two-story fall he nearly died from led him into broadcasting, and how he landed the plum job as the voice of the Sooners:

This was 1938. I'm 7 years old. Those days, pop was a nickel. What you would do in the summer, you would build a pop stand in your front yard. And my brother, four years older, still alive, he had a pop stand. So I had a nickel, of course he made me pay, and I bought a strawberry pop. My mother wasn't home and I wanted another strawberry pop. So I called dad down at his office to see if I could borrow another nickel from the next door neighbor. He said, "Son, don't bother me at work with something like that. You don't need another pop.”

But I went to the neighbor's anyway and asked to borrow a nickel.

The neighbor came over later, he was good buddies with my dad, and jokingly said to him, "You owe me a damn nickel.” My dad called me in, and said 'I thought I told you not to borrow a nickel.' I told him I didn't. He sent me upstairs without any dinner.

I was crying, and I leaned up against the screen, and fell two stories on my head on concrete. I fractured my skull.

My fall made the front page of The Daily Oklahoman. I bled through every orifice. They were worried about brain damage.

The treatment was to stay in bed for eight weeks, without lifting my head off the pillow. ... And there's no television.

So I became enamored with the radio. I wrote letters to the actors, and listened to the play-by-play, and really became interested in it. I thought, this sounds like fun.

I had a dice board. I would make a card of all the Major League Baseball players. And I would play a baseball game with them. And I would announce the play-by-play of the game I'm playing. And of course, no air-condition, the windows are up, the neighbors thought I was nuts. I'm yelling, "And it's a base hit to left field!” I put out a little newspaper every day of how my game went.

I got the job at KNOR when I got out of the Air Force. At first I was a salesman. Then Jack Ogle was out there. He went to WNAD, which was the university station. All of a sudden, the station manager didn't have a play-by-play man. So Jack asked me, 'Can you do play-by-play?' And I said, 'Sure I can.' That's how I started doing play-by-play for Norman High.

Bill Bryan was doing play-by-play for OU. But the group running things didn't like how he was doing it. So they decided to have tryouts.

So in 1961, there were 14 of us trying out. Each one of us in a separate booth in the press box.

I do think to this day that I had an advantage, because Bud used to listen to me at Norman High where his two sons, Jay and Pat, played when he couldn't go to the games.