From his humble beginnings as the Voice of the Benton Panthers basketball team at KBBA when he was in the ninth grade, Landers moved on to be the sports anchor at KTHV, KARK and KAIT television stations. He was the general manager for the old Arkansas Diamonds semi-pro football team and worked in real estate for some years before becoming owner of Benton's KEWI-AM, 690, station 16 years ago.

The 75-year-old Landers has broadcasted all of the Panthers' football games from his KEWI studio, and on Sept. 3 at the 11th Annual Salt Bowl in War Memorial Stadium he will announce his last Benton-Bryant football rivalry. He will hand over the reins of Panthers football broadcasts to Dr. Shane Knight.

"It's about time the big boy pulled in his wings from flying off those high roosts for a number of years now," Landers said. "I've experienced everything I care to. When I got started in radio, many many moons ago, John the Baptist was still here."

Actually, Landers did a play-by-play radio broadcast on an old tape recorder for a Benton letterman's club and the Panthers' head football coach Elbert Kizia took his tape to KBBA. Soon after, as a ninth-grader, Landers began doing Benton basketball games over the airwaves.

"I continued to do it through my college days at Teachers College in Conway [now UCA]," he said. "I was doing basketball games and working the board shift at KBBA. After John Miller ceased doing Panther football games, I started doing them."

But a young Landers was bent on trying different things and seeing different places.

He landed a job as the sports anchor for KTHV, Channel 11, in the 1960s where he hosted a sports talk show with professional athletes from around the nation. Landers rubbed elbows with the likes of heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, former Arkansas Razorback Bobby Nix, middleweight boxing champion Archie Moore, New York Yankees baseball player Clete Boyer and famed tennis great Arthur Ashe. Landers also traveled throughout the old Southwest Conference covering the Razorbacks.

"I look down through the years, and I can remember the first time I ever worked my first interview in local sports television was with the Davis Cup team," he recalled. "I didn't know anything about tennis, but Bud Campbell, the sports director at KATV, and Lonny Gibbons at KARK worked the interview with me. I listened very intently to Bud and picked up enough from him to do a very sophisticated interview. He always said, 'If you have to fake it, then do it,' and that's just what I did. Stuff like that was amusing, and we had a lot of fun."

During that time, he met his wife of 54 years, Deegy.

"He drove a little sports car with the Channel 11 logo on it, and our oldest daughter wouldn't ride with him, because she was embarrassed," Deegy Landers said. "We met when he was visiting the high school during my senior year. He'd come to see the coaches and I'd be waiting for class and watch him. Then he started coming to my church at Spring Creek Baptist. I thought, hmm ... so I asked Joe Lee Richards to introduce us and he did.

"The next night, Jim called me and asked me out on a date, and on our date I asked him to marry me and he said yes, so he doesn't have any excuses. He chose July 4th to be our wedding day and I asked him, Why did you choose Independence Day to lose your independence?' and he told me it was so he could remember our anniversary."

Landers and his wife had three daughters: Sharon, Denise and Melissa.

"My job was to make sure he had on a decent shirt, remind him it was time for a haircut and that he had to make an impression on people, but he's got his own mind," Deegy said. "It was a shock to me when he decided to give up football, because he's been doing it for so many years. It's a part of him."

Landers played football at Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway as a walk-on defensive end and offensive tackle before a broken leg ended his playing career.

"I was a 195 pounds and in the best shape of my life, but I won't ever see it again," he said.

Later in life, Landers took over the Arkansas Diamonds football team of the Continental League, which recruited NFL players from teams like the Chicago Bears, St. Louis Cardinals, San Diego Chargers and Minnesota Vikings and played home football games at Quigley Stadium in Little Rock.

"I worked diligently to set the schedule in those days where we'd be out of state playing on a Sunday when the Razorbacks were playing at home," Landers said. "There were some sportswriters around that didn't like us, but we had a pretty good league going. There was not conflict of interest at all. We'd pick up players from these NFL taxi squads and had a magnitude of talent, but it got to the point where the people responsible for it all wouldn't pitch in where they said they would financially."

When he resigned from managing, Landers took on the sports anchor duties at KARK, Channel 4, as a part of a three-man broadcast team with newsman Les Bolton and weatherman Tom Bonner, as well as working at KARN radio with Ron Sherman. Landers even worked as the sports play-by-play man for Channel 26 in Hot Springs doing Henderson State University and Ouachita Baptist University football games. He later left the Little Rock market to do play-by-play for Arkansas State and work as the sports anchor at KAIT, Channel 8, while also managing an 45-client advertising business in Jonesboro.

"I'd do the 6 and 10 broadcast and travel with the team doing play-by-play," Landers said. "Those were the good ol' days."

Landers later took on a real estate position in New Mexico at Alto Village as the marketing director and a few years down the line came to work at Hot Springs Village with Cooper Communities.

"New Mexico was beautiful country and I hated to leave it, but my family still lived here and I'm a homeboy and I always missed my family," he said. "I did some traveling around with construction companies through 27 states doing television commercials until I got tired of sleeping in motels and decided it was time to settle down. We moved back to Benton and I started working for the Cooper family at Hot Springs Village and it would be nothing for me to go to a 7 a.m. sales meeting and come home at 10 p.m. I did that seven days a week for the most part."

However, 16 years ago, Landers met with Bernie Bottenberg of Benton and bought KEWI 690 AM.

"We picked up St. Louis Cardinal baseball, Dallas Cowboy football, some of the Arkansas Razorback games and we did all of the Benton football, baseball and basketball games," he said. "I had found a roost."

At KEWI, Landers featured a 1950s-style block programing that included swing music, pop, a trading post show, country and gospel music, as well as sports broadcasting.

"People outside the area called us all the time telling us how much they liked the programming, because it was a unique style," he said. "We have something for everybody. You wonder sometimes if people appreciate running up and down the road after these kids, getting up at 3 a.m. and going to midnight. You don't get many pats on the back, but it's been a lot of fun."

Landers broadcast Cliff Lee's earliest pitching performances at Benton, as well as that of Bryant's Travis Wood. Both are in the major leagues now, Lee having won the Cy Young Award and Wood as a rookie helping Cincinnati to the top of the National League Central Division this summer.

"That brings back a lot of memories and kind of makes your eyes bully a little," he said. "I chose Dr. Knight, because he can get the job done and get it across to the folks. But I'll be at every one of the games. I enjoy watching them, but as a play-by-play man you get lost in trying to do a ball game to the extent where you only see what you have to announce. You don't see those other blocks and tackles and things of that nature. I want to see those things and enjoy them.

"And these days I can't fight the public address announcers, even though I've been accused of hearing a mouse on a piece of cotton. It's one of those situations where there are too many obstacles preventing you from doing what you feel like people need."

Knight, a graduate of Russellville High School, Williams Baptist College, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Temple Seminary and who got his PhD in psychology at Louisiana Baptist University, will take over the broadcast of Panthers football games from now on.

"It's beyond humbling," Knight said. "This is huge. You take a situation like this where it happened so fast and when you tell people what is going to take place, they are shocked. Jim Landers is an institution and it's not an everyday occurrence where a young man like myself has an opportunity to follow in the large footsteps of a community icon like him. It's unreal, but I think a lot of it has to do with the amount of respect Jim has in the Benton community. It's beyond an honor, it's awesome and it will be exciting."

As far as the Benton-Bryant rivalry goes, Landers has seen his share of Panther cakewalks and lately, the resurgence of Hornets football at Bryant.

"When it comes to the kickoff, the tip-off or the first pitch ... whatever sport it is, these two teams will give it 199 percent," Landers said. "It's a friendly rivalry and I've enjoyed it tremendously over the years."

He and his longtime friend Freddie Rhinehart, who carries the equipment, plan to continue with the basketball and baseball broadcasts of Panther athletics until he can find a replacement, but Landers will continue his day-to-day duties as KEWI station owner.

In Benton though, the voice of Panthers football won't ever be the same after 16 years on the air ever Friday night during football season. However, as Landers says, "when you don't have any flint left in that lighter, it's time to step aside."