Jeff Charles

 

My earliest memory of pirate athletics involved Jeff Charles. I was a kid at the time, but recall where I was when my father told me we needed to check out the ECU score. He explained what a big deal for the area this particular game was. That was October 26th, 1991 when #20 ECU played a ranked Pittsburgh team. We didn't have cable at the time, and I'm not sure it was even on cable but this is the exact call I heard 30+ years ago in the closing minutes.

I was hooked from that day and followed along for the rest of the season. When I learned of the Peach Bowl bid and it being on ESPN I found a place to watch the game at my grandmother's. The Peach Bowl is the first football game I ever remember watching from start to finish. My uncle was an ECU grad and had gone to the bowl game. When he found out about my new ECU fandom he started taking me to some ECU football and basketball games the next season and the rest is history. 

This was the early 90's and there wasn't the internet or the kind of entertainment options of today so sports became my entertainment, especially ECU. There weren't many ECU games on TV  in those days and many times I would check in on the radio and read box scores and standings the next day in the paper. Around 1993  a few ECU basketball and football games a season were beginning to be played on local TV. They also were hosted by Jeff Charles, so he was always a constant.

When pirate radio was launched his show was always one of my favorites.  It gave you a chance to hear some of his personal thoughts and he always had good guests from around the country and seemed genuinely liked and respected in the industry nationwide. That came off in the interviews with anyone that seemed to cross paths with him. You also got the personal side more. I remember him opening up about the loss of his daughter on the show and talking about a support group he was a part of that helped other families dealing with the loss of a child. This is a loss for eastern North Carolina. 

 If ECU had a 2nd rate broadcast in those years who knows if I would have continued to listen. Almost immediately ECU football was bad the next two years after 1991 but his broadcast always made the games enjoyable and seem meaningful and worth following even if I couldn't watch. Even as it became possible in the digital age to see all ECU basketball games online after CSTV became a host the radio feed was the audio for those early years.  As a fan, I have thought several times over the last decade how lucky ECU was to still have him calling games, after the cancer scare. Most schools don't get the services of anyone for 35 years.  He will be missed.