'Icon' Chester football announcer Carlisle Roddey to miss 1st game in 45 years due to illness

Sleet, flat tires, overheating radiators never kept Carlisle Roddey from the microphone of a Chester High School football game for 45 years. But a hospital stay means that Friday night the “icon of Chester” will miss broadcasting the Chester High School football game for the first time since Richard Nixon was president of the United States.

Roddey, 77, Chester County supervisor for almost four decades until earlier this year in what he called a day job between football seasons remains at Chester Regional Medical Center from an infection, said Jim Fuller, president of the Chester Regional Chamber of Commerce. Fuller has been “color man” on broadcasts with Roddey for decades.

“The game will go on and we will broadcast it but Carlisle wants to be there more than anything,” Fuller said Friday afternoon. “If there ever was an icon of Chester, he is it. Carlisle Roddey is Chester football on a Friday night on the radio.”

Roddey has broadcast games on the radio – now heard on WRBK-FM, 90.3 – since 1970. His homespun style and witty lines are as much a part of the game as the plays he describes, using terms such as carrying the ball like a bouquet of roses or a halfback “faster than a thief runnin’ out the back door.”

Last summer after back surgery, Roddey rushed through recovery like a linebacker on a blitz so he could head to “the closest thing to heaven I know here on this earth – the press box to call out a Chester High School football game.”

Longtime broadcast teammates Clint Davis and Mike Enoch will be with Fuller in the booth. The broadcast starts at 6 p.m. with pre-recorded segments Roddey did earlier in the week, then starts live after 7 p.m. when Fuller will tell the audience that Roddey is sidelined for the first time in more than 400 games.

“We all want Carlisle to get fixed up quick so he can get back here in the booth with us,” Fuller said.

This story was originally published August 21, 2015 at 3:12 PM with the headline "'Icon' Chester football announcer Carlisle Roddey to miss 1st game in 45 years due to illness."