PBS Hawaiʻi Classics
Chuck Leahey
2/19/2025 | 28m 15sVideo has Closed Captions
Chuck Leahey
Chuck Leahey
PBS Hawaiʻi Classics is a local public television program presented by PBS Hawai'i
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Bob Barker, Bob Barker: Hi and welcome to the program for and by the senior citizens of Hawaii today on Pau Hana Years, our guest is the dean of Hawaii sportscasters.
Chuck Leahey, Chuck, how long have you been broadcasting sports?
Chuck Leahey: Oh, I'd say a little over 25 years, actually.
I want to thank you very much for Dean, that's about as high as I can get.
BB: Were you active in, as a participant in sports when you were a youth?
CL: When I was, you know, in high school, and then when I got in the Navy, very active in baseball and basketball.
BB: Baseball and basketball.
You, know, we have prominent sportscasters who are active, were active participants in sports, and then those who were just interested spectators.
Do you think this makes a difference in the quality of a sportscaster's work as to whether he actually participated or not?
CL: No, I don't think so.
For example, many of the national sportscasters, some of them have been they're former professional football players.
Some of them have not participated, but the number one thing is, they wanted to be sportscasters, so they learned the game.
And many times, I have found out that the spectator knows the rule better than the player, BB: Yes, yes.
CL: And that has been shown many times by when we do a ball game, that spectator will come up right away with something that's wrong.
Where the referee is let it go by.
But all in all, the dedication and the ability and being prepared is the key to sportscasting.
BB: You were in the Navy for how long?
CL: 23 years.
BB: You, when did you retire?
CL: I retired 1959.
BB: Were you involved in athletics all during your Navy career?
CL: Yes, I'd say, yeah, baseball and played basketball and and, you know, a lot of golf, and was in rowing where they had the whale boats.
BB: Oh, yes, uh huh.
CL: And I gave that up.
Man, that's tough.
BB: I bet.
CL: That’ll rip you.
But, you know, real active all the time.
BB: But you were an athletic director then too, weren't you?
CL: No, no, I became an athletic director after I retired.
BB: Oh, after you retired.
CL: After I retired, I retired as a chief journalist.
BB: Oh, I see.
CL: And I was working for Max Winter out here, and we were doing Max Winter enterprises, putting on sports shows.
And we'd put on one sports show with Patti Page, and we had it down at the Kapi'olani Park.
And it rained for a whole week, and Max says, you know, I got to go back to Minneapolis, where it freezes, this is kiling me out here.
After I had been working there for some time.
I got a call from a Rear Admiral Solomons, and he wanted me to come out and talk to him about being the athletic director for the naval district in which I came out and talked to him.
And yes, I did become athletic director.
BB: So you were, you’re athletic director as a civilian?
CL: Right.
BB: You were instrumental in first bringing college basketball to Hawaii, weren't you?
CL: Yeah, this was... BB: Mainland college basketball.
CL: This was back in about 1962 I found that you could actually bring teams out here on MAC Air transport, you know.
And they were... BB: By this, you mean, navy... CL: Yeah it's a military air... BB: Military plane mm hm.
CL: And that they also could be put up by the commandant as his guest.
BB: Oh.
CL: Now the object of it was to bring out these teams that the people read about but don't see.
Now, we had an opportunity to see them.
So we used to bring out throughout the year.
First year we brought just a couple, the second year we brought about four.
And then the third year we had about eight, but we took three of them and put them in a Christmas tournament.
So there were three big colleges out here.
There was, at one time, Tennessee State, Los Angeles State, and Utah.
Three of them were out here for a Christmas tournament with Sub-faculty Army and the Air Force.
And it we then would turn one game over to the university.
We would play them twice and turn one game over the university.
And Red Rocha used to coach in the Armed Forces League.
He had a Naval Station.
BB: Oh, did he?
CL: Right.
BB: I didn't know that.
CL: And then right after that, he became the head coach at the University of Hawaii.
So he saw this, I think, and and Red's mind works in devious ways, and he got the idea for the classic.
Like a lot of people say, gee, you started the classic.
I did not start the classic.
I worked with people that started it; Red Rocha, Jack Bonham, God rest his soul, and Young Sako and President Tom Hamilton at the time.
Then there was Vince Esposito and a lot of other people.
But the object of it was that we could in the in the service, help the university create this program in which they did.
BB: Now, I suppose, since you were able to bring these mainland teams out here on military transport and so forth and put them up, did you have any trouble getting teams to come out to Hawaiʻi?
CL: No, this is where it became a real recruiting angle for some of these ball clubs.
And you give me an example, a lot of people say, Gee, they spent government money.
Yeah, we didn't spend government money for this.
We put it out on non-appropriated fund money, and then they we charged, and we usually made more than what we needed.
BB: Why don't you explain for the viewers, the non-appropriated money the difference between that and navy funds.
CL: Well, appropriated money is money that is appropriated by Congress for the military.
Non-appropriated money is a money that is from Navy exchanges.
And from Navy exchanges, a certain percentage of the money goes to morale and welfare, which is special services.
In other words, money that the men have earned rather than.
BB: And they spend in the store and they get it back in their morale and welfare.
A lot of people take that, don't realize that that situation prevails, and now non-appropriated fund money has become a very important factor, very important factor because of the cut down of appropriated money.
So when you look at special services, you don't put it down at the bottom.
You kind of bring it up and take a good look at it, because it is a very important factor.
CL: How many military teams were there back in those days when you were doing this early?
BB: Was it enough... CL: Oh, about eight or nine.
There was Barbers Point Naval Station, SUBPAC.
The Army had two teams.
Sometimes they wanted three, because they had so many people, you know.
And Hickam Air Force, and the Coast Guard had one COMM SURFPAC, SUBPAC.
So it is close to nine or 10 teams.
BB: What all sports did you get involved in?
CL: Well we got involved in two sports, baseball and basketball.
Basketball became like a number one, and then in baseball, there were about the same amount of teams, less maybe two, three.
And we played intercollegiate teams Southern California, Santa Clara Brigham Young, they came out here, and many of them came out on their own from a recruiting angle, but they had a place to stay and had somebody to play.
Oh yes.
And then we got into what we call the Hawaiʻi Major League, which were teams from downtown.
And this was one of the concepts that I was trying to and working with the commandant and the other service commanders, no program can go unless there is a mutual meeting of the minds and they agree.
And the commanders were very cooperative to the point where we played the teams in the community.
BB: Local teams and that so to speak., CL: Right?
And in doing so, we brought the people closer to the military.
The military don't live behind a fence, and this was a concept that we wanted to bring to them.
And this day, Bob many of the military.
They're in the churches, they're in the programs, they're in the retarded children programs.
So you see there, they're just a part of the community.
Yeah, they're out here for a couple three years, but there is a real endeavor on their part to become a part of the community.
BB: Then this participation in a common athletic program was somewhat a start of mixing them into the community, then, huh?
CL: Right, right.
BB: With all your involvement in military athletics, how did you first get into broadcasting sports?
CL: I first got into broadcasting sports when I was on recruiting duty in Portland, Oregon, at radio station KVAN in Vancouver, Washington and KXL in Portland; Rocky Mountain Network, Bozeman, Montana, Helena, Montana and I had a 15 minute sports show on Saturday for Navy recruiting.
BB: Oh, you were stationed there in recruiting at the time?
CL: Right.
I was there for about three years, and I did at KVAN, I broadcasted football for the Southwestern High School conference.
And that was Vancouver, Chehalis, Battle Creek, Washougal, Camas, and you go up a tree and do a game.
They didn't have any food.
But I got started there.
Then, as I say, the 15 minute roogram KXL in Portland, Oregon.
I had a guy by name of Fred Eichorn III was the program director, fabulous young man.
And one Saturday, there was an argument that the cadets of army should go to the Rose Bowl instead of Illinois.
You remember that argument back in 1947 or 48 something like that.
And there was an argument that the cadets of West Point should go to the Rose Bowl instead of the University of Illinois.
And so I said that that, yes, that should be done.
And this guy called up on a phone.
He says, Yeah, dummy, the cadets can't go because the Army won't let them, and neither will the Secretary of the Army or the President, and that's why they can't go.
So I get you.
So I felt kind of bad.
I went in.
I said, Hey, Fred, gee, I got a call.
A guy was really whiffed.
Says, don't worry about it, you got a listener.
Yeah, you know what I mean.
So I said, all right, but I didn't want him to call again, because he was kind of up in the air, you know.
But when you're just starting little things like that... BB: They bother you, mm hm.
CL: Yeah, they bother you.
BB: But then, of course, as you go along through the years, you begin to realize a little controversy is a good thing.
It's called building an audience.
CL: Right, now they come up in groves and say, "you dummy!"
BB: Did you then, that was your start.
But then, of course, you went on to a lot more of it, as far as especially the play by play and everything.
Did you go through any kind of a training or apprenticeship or anything like that?
Or did you just pick it all up by yourself?
CL: No, actually, I picked up most of it by myself.
But there were actually, there was actually one man in this town that helped me an awful lot, and that's Frank Valenti.
BB: Oh yeah, good old Frank.
CL: And Frank helped me get the show and helped me on many of the sports.
I used to sit with him when he did his recreation.
He probably one of the finest recreators in the business.
When it came to baseball.
BB: That’s an art in itself, recreating.
CL: Right, and Carlos Rivas, who was over in the other island, you know, the Spanish bullfighter, and they helped me out tremendously.
And then as you go along, you pick things up from the sportscasters that you hear.
Les Keiter, I used to listen to Les, you know.
And he's a real old pro, yeah.
And lot of people say, Well, I like him.
I don't like him.
Well, that's you don't like a certain kind of automobile either, but the delivery of these sportscasters were something you listened to and see if it fit your type of sportscasting.
Mine was, well, I like to get the people excited.
I'd like to bring the game to them as I'm their eyes.
BB: Yes.
CL: And I think one of the greatest things that ever happened to me, and and awards that I received and everything else is I was doing a Santa Clara, University of Hawaiʻi game many years while I was the voice of Hawaiʻi for basketball and football they were playing out here and they were broadcasting.
They carried the game back in the mainland, in Santa Clara, and there was a blind man, and his name was Oscar Travins, and he heard this see, so next year, that team came out here, and the first person he wanted to see when he got here was me.
So I saw him when I came into the stadium.
I think it was the fellow that used to be the councilman, great Santa Clara man.
He met me, and he had this gentleman with him.
And he says, I want to thank you very much.
He says, you were my eyes.
He said I could see that game so plain, well, I wanted to really, to be very frank with go over and let a tear go, because he made me feel tremendous.
BB: Oh sure.
CL: And and to me, that's the greatest compliment I ever got.
I don't care what the rest of them do.
BB: How do you feel about the business of the local sportscaster favoring his own team in his in his sportscasting, in other words, as versus neutral, absolute neutrality.
CL: Well, if you're doing a baseball, say professional baseball.
You know the New York Giants are, I mean, the San Francisco Giants or Los Angeles Dodgers, there's a certain amount of loyalty.
You have to have.
BB: Well that's financial loyalty.
CL: That’s a financial.
Now you come down to a university, and you're the voice of that university.
Well, I went on a road with the university for maybe five, six years, and I don't think that once I ever showed a prejudice towards the University of Hawaiʻi.
When we were down in Mobile, Alabama, back in 1970 in a Senior Bowl classic, the university couldn't get a basket.
They couldn't hit the basket.
It was down around their knees, and I said it at that time.
The only other comment that I've made is probably on the crowd.
The crowds up in the mainland are not the best in the world.
You get down into Texas, you're lucky to get out of there alive, really.
You get down into Mobile, Alabama, and you keep looking to see what color you are all the time.
Know, but I may, and I have, yes, I made comments on officiating in Alabama, they had a guy by name of Charlie McCarthy, and Red knew him.
He said, Gee, don't tell me he's going to handle a ball game.
Red knew him from his pro days, see.
And I said, What's wrong with him?
He says,boy, he's bad.
Well, it turned out he was bad.
And as he came by the broadcasting booth, which was right next to the bench, I said, well, here comes Charlie McCarthy and boy, he's a dummy.
And the guy wanted to snap a technical on the radio broadcast.
And Red went up in the air and he said you canʻt do that.
Yeah, you dummy, there's another one, but, no, I think you want to lean with them, yeah.
But again, you you want to be about as non-partisan as possible, but you kind of lean Bobby, you know, like Pau Hana Years, yeah, you bet your life.
BB: Yeah, yeah.
Now, when we were talking a while ago about the what sports you were involved in with the Navy.
You mentioned basketball and baseball.
Why no football?
CL: Well, we didn't play football because BB: It’s not too, not too rough for the servicemen?
CL: No, no.
It wasn't that.
It was.
Football is an extremely expensive sport and to have an individual command play football.
Oh, they did, you know, right after the war, up until a period of about 1955, 56 it just got financially too much for them to handle.
But actually, the first television of football was the Marines and Naval station.
And I think it was 1957 Frank Valenti on an old scaffolding that we put on Ward field.
And they did that game over KGMB.
Bob Baker: And by the way, you mentioned climbing a tree to broadcast those games back in the Northwest.
And of course, this is, this is very true.
People may not believe that.
I mean, I used to go out with the sportscasters on jobs back in the old radio days.
And many times you'd climb a telephone pole and hang on the telephone pole to describe the games.
Right down here at Castle.
You remember that old station used to be in Kāneʻohe?
BB: Yeah.
CL: Pat…Patterson, BB: Yeah.
CL: I was working there at that time, and we were doing a rural league, and they had a platform on a pole, and you go up and sit there with your board on your knee, you know, and they run as a transmitter out of the back end of this fellow Don's automobile.
And that was, I don't know how far it carried, but it got far enough to where the Federal Aviation Administration was grumbling because we're cutting in on Pan.American flight coming into the airport like, you know, use runway 35 and then I'll come up and say, on the 35 yard line Castle goes down to the Kahuku 12 you know.
Get him off of there.
But that was an actual fact.
But up on his platform, and then when it rained, you couldn't get down.
BB: Yeah.
CL: Because Patterson went to get a raincoat or a cup of coffee.
And forget the sportscaster, BB: Yeah, yeah.
CL: But that was.
BB: Which, which sports, sport do you prefer covering as a sportscaster?
CL: Well, I think basketball.
BB: Why?
CL: Oh, I don't know the movement, the, you can, I seem to be able to get into a game BB: Baseball’s a little slow CL: Oh, baseball'd drive me up the wall.
Baseball, you've got, that is probably the hardest sport there is to broadcast, is baseball.
You have got to know the history of that game and these players and their backgrounds and everything else, really.
BB: Because you got to do a lot of talking in between every move.
CL: And boxing.
I love boxing.
BB: You’ve done both radio and TV.
Which of those do you prefer?
CL: I think I'd prefer radio.
Really.
I was with Jim, and I did for about 15 months, KITV, uh Family Leahy Sports, and there's an awful lot of pressure in this.
And they say, Okay, you got three minutes and 10 seconds.
You got a minute and five seconds for sports, you know, there was no set time, so you had to fit your whole program around that.
And it's an awful lot of pressure.
And then the doctor told me, get out of there, you know.
BB: You’ve been the voice of the Hula Bowl since its beginning.
When and how did that contest originate?
CL: Well, actually, the voices is, is the pre-game and halftime shows, which I was producing and it came through Mr. Yanagizawa.
I became friends with Mackay, and I utilized the stadium many times for international baseball stuff like that.
So I became the the downfield announcer and stuff like that.
So over, over a period of years, I got on the committee of the Hula Bowl and and we went all the way to where last year we had 45,000 it was just a, a beautiful setting.
But a lot of people do not realize that Mackay had to actually mortgage his house in the early days of the Hula Bowl twice to keep it going.
BB: Is that so?
CL: That’s a fact, and he doesn't like anybody to say that, but I'm going to say it anyhow, because I think that should be brought out.
He really did.
And then ABC picked up, and you know, now it's a very successful post game.
BB: What do you think of the new stadium?
CL: I think it's beautiful.
I think it's beautiful.
It needs a few more escalators.
It needs a couple of more dressing rooms and probably a couple of more offices.
But all in all, with this concept of movement that they have, which they're moving right now, to put it in a baseball configuration, it's fabulous.
And when I took a look on the monitor of the television, ABC, I was looking at the monitor, and I saw the overall picture of this stadium with that 45,000 and the beauty of this of our islands, I said, boy, what a beautiful thing.
And then when that went back to the mainland, there has been an awful lot of people say, Hey, look at that.
They really got something out there, and they really have but controversy will come with anything.
BB: Oh, sure.
CL: You wear green shoes and you're going to get trouble about it.
BB: Now you've also been the voice of the ILH and OIA for, leagues for many years.
Now, the ILH is the private and parochial League and the OIA is public schools.
CL: The Oʻahu Interscholastic Association.
BB: Why are there two?
CL: Well, years ago, they used to be together.
There was a private schools and the public schools, and primarily the schools in the city of the public schools were in it.
The outside schools, Kailua, Castle, Radford, they were not in the ILH.
But the ILH had set up certain rules on recruiting of ball players, which the rural leagues or the public schools could not do.
You could not do that, see, so they broke away.
Well, probably, in my estimation, it's a good thing they broke away, because all of a sudden, the public schools, they got 21 of them now, and there's about six ILH schools that play football, and there's six that play basketball and and they have their own program.
But they all culminate into a state tournament in basketball and in tennis and in swimming and everything, I think, a real fine thing.
And Clay Benham of the ILH has done a fabulous job.
And and Bill Smythe of, the Executive Secretary of the OIA, has done a fine job with 21 high schools and run a big program like that.
So they they broke apart, and some people want to get them back together again.
And then, if you look at it, overall, you want to achieve is that the thing to do to pull a 21 team league into a six, or incorporate this six into 20 and one to make it 27 and a lot of thought has to go into that, because it's a different money and economical problem.
ILH is private schools, yeah, and OIA is the public schools, DOE.
BB: Chuck, you've won several awards.
What are those?
CL: Well, I won the sportscaster award from Salisbury, North Carolina, that's where they pick out sportscaster of the state a couple times.
And I've won other awards that were given to me by the sports writers of the city and sportscasters testimonial, and the governor has given me a couple awards for pushing handicap things and optimist clubs.
And all of them are just so appreciative of em.
I appreciate them.
BB: Earlier we talked about your start in sportscasting.
Now you've helped a lot of young fellows get started through your, working with you, who are some of these guys that we know now?
CL: Well, I worked with Joe Moore.
Joe one day came down and he'd never done basketball, so we worked with him, and I worked with Al Michaels.
Of course, I didn't have to help Al too much, except he was up pretty tight when we were doing baseball, so he, I told him, forget it, let's have a little fun.
You know, he became, he's probably one of the finest sportscasters in the country.
I've worked with Jim continuously.
BB: Jim, your son.
CL: Yeah, Jim is just flying by himself.
Now, I'd like to have him help me now.
BB: He’s won some awards too, hasn't he?
CL: He’s won, uh, sportscaster of the year four times in a row.
BB: Four times in a row, How many children do you have?
CL: I have five, four boys and a girl.
BB: Four boys and a girl.
CL: Yeah, I got Mickey and Chucky and Robbie and Jimmy as the boys and Charlie, who's a nurse at Queens.
BB: Jimmy followed, Jim followed in your footsteps.
Now, any other boys getting into sportscasting?
CL: Well at KGU, we were going to do the high school football for, out of the stadium.
And then I got sick, my other two sons came in to help Jim.
So they became a colormen and spotters and analysts, and they loved it.
Now you can't get them away from it.
BB: Chuck, you had a bad sick spell last year, didn't you?
CL: Yeah, I about a year and a half ago, I was warned by a doctor said, we see some shadows of emphysema there, and you should take care of yourself and stop smoking.
Well, I didn't pay much attention to them.
And then about September, it really hit me, and they brought me out of the thing, okay?
And they said, You got it.
So I had to curtail an awful lot of activity and slow down and kind of a different lifestyle if you want to continue on, you know.
BB: But you're still working at uh... CL: Yeah, I said, Well, I cannot stop working.
I don't think they want me to stop working.
They just want me to slow down.
Don't go up the steps so fast, this kind of stuff.
But if I had listened to them a year and a half ago, I wouldn't have been in this shape.
So you're looking at a real dummy.
BB: You mean, in other words, if you had quit smoking when they told you to.
CL: And if anybody listening in, there are so many more worse than I am.
I can be very thankful that it isn't as bad as some of them.
But if anybody ever tells you something, man, listen to them.
Really listen to them, because they know.
They really know.
And I know it's hard, but I think if you offered me a cigarette today, I'd die if I took it really but boy, what a lesson you have to learn.
BB: Yeah, hard lesson, Chuck.
Thanks very much for visiting with us.
I enjoyed it.
CL: I enjoyed it too, Bob.
And good luck to you.
BB: Our guest, Chuck Leahey, Dean of Hawaiʻi sportscasters.
And that's Pau Hana Years for today, until our next program.
This is Bob Barker leaving you with this thought.
There is a need to feel our bodies have a skill and energy of their own, apart from the man made machines they may drive, there is the desire to find in sport a companionship with kindred people.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember, although you know the snow will follow.
Deepin December, it's nice to remember you to remember without a hurt, the heart is hollow.
Deep in December, it's Nice to remember the fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December, our hearts should remember and follow.
PBS Hawaiʻi Classics is a local public television program presented by PBS Hawai'i