Mark Snyder

Detroit Free Press

For more than 30 years, one voice marked Saturday afternoons in Michigan Stadium.

Howard King was the public address announcer from 1972-2005 at the Big House and on Wednesday, that voice was silenced as he passed away.

The news was relayed in a Facebook post by King's successor at the Stadium mic, Carl Grapentine, who wrote: "I just received very sad news. Howard King, the Voice of Michigan Stadium from 1972-2005, passed away this morning in Traverse City. He was 83. Not only a colleague but a dear friend for several decades. RIP and Go Blue."

King got the job by happenstance that first year when he connected with insurance agent Bob Ufer, who was also U-M's legendary broadcaster.

King told his story to The Michigan Daily's Jim Rose in the fall of 1998.

"They had been having auditions throughout the summer and I made it in time for the last round," King said. "I had never been inside Michigan Stadium being from Ohio. Geez, I walked into that press box, and looked out at this huge empty stadium ... I was astounded. I had no idea."

He explained that he rose from his first game as a high school sophomore in Wooster, Ohio, and, a similar break as would occur years later. The public address announcer got sick and he left class to take the job. That led to a terrible, choppy start, classes to improve and a spot in Michigan lore.

According to the story, he flew planes since he was 12 and beat cancer multiple times, but working the games was something unique to him.

King worked the basketball PA also for 20 years at Crisler Arena and became a symbol of one of U-M's most prideful statements, that those in the Big House were part of "the largest crowd watching football anywhere in America" today.

"He was a hard one to replace when we replaced him in 2005," longtime U-M sports information director Bruce Madej said in a phone interview. "When people went to Michigan Stadium that voice reverberated throughout the Big House. I think that's one of the things people will always remember. 'Good afternoon' was the one thing I always remembered, how he started off. He was a great guy."

Madej shared many lunches with King and years in that small old press box in close quarters where the voice more than 100,000 embraced had virtually no idea who it was and what he looked like.

"They knew it was a real person, they just wanted to know who it was," Madej said. "He had a timber sound in his voice that you couldn't forget. ... He was never bigger than the game. He kept it simple."

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