Follow
On June 20, 2015, Oklahoma City lost a cherished sports broadcaster who charmed
television and radio audiences for years. It was on that summer day the tragic death of Bob Barry, Jr. occurred. The metro area was in palpable shock. Barry’s voice was silenced.
Barry was the sports director for Oklahoma City television station KFOR and Sports Morning radio host for WWLS, the Sports Animal. Many simply called him BBJ. He was the son of legendary Oklahoma sports broadcaster, Bob Barry, Sr.
If you talk to people who knew Barry, they will usually note his smile, his energy and his genuine personality. He has earned the respect of viewers, listeners and coworkers alike.
“When I received the phone call that afternoon, I was in shock,” KFOR anchor Linda Cavanaugh tells Splurge. “Truly, I think I still am. I keep expecting him to walk in the door from a long vacation. It was just so odd that I sat next to him Friday night with our usual jokes and conversation. To imagine that won’t happen again is still surreal.”
Mark Rodgers’ radio show followed Barry’s on WWLS. He says while Barry might be gone, his legacy is felt.
“I’ve spent the last few weeks doing shows from places where BBJ has been for years. It’s difficult on everyone involved. I know they miss him. They know we miss him. It’s a process that we all have to go through as humans. Not an enjoyable process, but one that is best done in numbers. There is no way to handle a situation on the air. I will always welcome a story about Bob. Someone that knew of something small or big he did for someone else, or sometime where he made someone laugh. I think we would all welcome those memories and thoughts,” Rodgers says.
Rodgers and Barry met at WWLS radio in 1994. They had several mutual interests, including basketball and high school sports. When Rodgers left WWLS to start a new sports endeavor, Barry supported him all the way.
“In 1995, I had left the radio station to create the Oklahoma Pigskin Preview. I wrote up an article on every high school football team in the state. I spoke with Bob about the project and he loved the idea,” says Rodgers. “He had me on his show to help promote and spread the word about the magazine. It was a kind gesture to help me get up and going. And every year that followed, I always delivered magazines to him as they came off the press.”
Cavanaugh will always remember Barry fondly.
“It is so hard to pinpoint one specific memory because everything about Bobby was memorable,” she says. “He brought sunshine into the newsroom. He was always smiling. He was always quick to ask how you were doing. He was always the kind of guy that you want to be around.”
Cavanaugh says that one fond memory of hers is Barry’s love of ties.
“If you ever noticed he had on a different tie every night. I would say it was safe to say he had well over 500 ties. He came in one day and told me that he had taken three hundred ties to Goodwill. So there are some very nicely dressed people wearing Bobby’s ties.”
Rodgers shares Cavanaugh’s sentiments about pinning down one memory of Barry, but he knows that the sportscaster is remembered fondly.
“As far as coming up with a story about BBJ, there isn’t one or two that standout to me after 20 years,” says Rodgers. “The stories told at his memorial service were so uplifting and would have made the best tellers of stories in history proud. We didn’t socialize a bunch due to our similar schedules. We spent the most time together covering teams and attending media functions. What did standout to me was his attitude and magnanimous personality. He was what he appeared to be on television and on the radio. He loved sports. He loved talking to and meeting people. It was real and genuine and it showed.”
Rodgers says Barry was the consummate professional even when they were on competing television stations.
“I think we are the same in a sense that in the television business there are a lot of deadlines, stress and general garbage going on internally at the stations. We just loved sports. When I was in the business, I tried to put together the most interesting, entertaining sportscast I could every day. It was more of a competition to do the best we could do as a team. Scoops were important. And I worked them and got some. Bob did the same and did it very well. I never felt competitive with Bob for scoops and we congratulated each other when we got one. But we shared more and discussed how to balance resources in the sports department and deal with politics in the newsroom more than anything else. We had the same job and were each secure enough to know that we could make each other better. We believed in and respected each other as people more than developing a rivalry to benefit a giant, faceless corporation,” says the former KOCO-TV sports director.
From the first day she met Barry, Cavanaugh says she could tell he was just like his dad, Bob Barry, Sr.
“The very first time I met Bobby, it was like a clone of his dad. They are both grown men with the hearts of little boys. They loved games. They loved life and in that respect, they were DNA matches.”
She says the connection between the broadcaster father-son team was unbreakable. Both men had no problem showing affection for one another.
“His dad would be sitting at the desk and Bobby would come up behind, throw his arms around him, and kiss him on the cheek. Every single day that they worked together. That’s what I remember about Bobby.”
Barry’s death brought the local media and the community together. Putting competition aside, KOCO-TV offered to staff KFOR’s newsroom so that Barry’s co-workers could attend his memorial service. The public’s outpouring has been significant according to Cavanaugh.
“I think the support of Oklahoma City and, in fact, the support of the state made it easier for all of us,” says Cavanaugh. “It gave us strength. It was important to us that they did recognize Bobby for what he was. A lot of these folks had never even met him. I got one memorable letter from a viewer who said that she had never met Bobby, had never met Senior (Bob Barry, Sr.). She just felt like she had a personal connection with them through watching them on television. That’s how they affected people. She said in her letter that she couldn’t remember since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a time when a whole community seemed to come together in grief to remember someone.”
BY Jason Doyle Oden | Photos Provided By KFOR-TV
Follow
