STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) - Fran Fisher, who broadcast Penn State football games on the radio for many years, has died. He was 91.
Fisher was found dead in his State College town house on Thursday morning, likely of natural causes, said his son, Jerry Fisher.
Fran Fisher began working for the Penn State Radio Network in 1966. He did play-by-play from 1970 to 1982 and again from 1994 to 1999.
A native of Greensburg, he had run the Nittany Lion Club, which supports university athletics. He also headed up an advertising and marketing firm.
Fisher’s first radio game at Penn State was also the first of Joe Paterno’s head coaching career, a 15-7 victory over Maryland on Sept. 17, 1966.
The men became close friends and worked together when Fisher became an assistant athletic director and executive of the Nittany Lion Club, both in the 1980s.
“They were joined at the hip,” said Jack Ham, a former Penn State linebacker and Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Famer who has done color commentary on the radio for Penn State. “You talk about people who were devoted to Penn State. Joe Paterno was No. 1 and Fran Fisher was right there along with him.”
Lou Prato, a friend, had dinner with Fisher Tuesday night while watching the Pittsburgh Pirates game on television. Fisher was a big baseball fan and covered Game 7 of the 1960 World Series for WHJB, which the Pirates won, 10-9, on Bill Mazeroski’s ninth-inning home run.
“He was a legend with Penn State fans as much as Joe Paterno was,” Prato said.
Fisher was born in Salem, Ohio, and attended his first Penn State football game as a boy in 1932, when he was living in the Pittsburgh suburb of Dormont. Fisher’s family later moved to Greensburg, where he graduated high school in 1941.
Fisher attended Bethany College and then Penn State but didn’t graduate because he joined the Navy in 1942. He married his high-school sweetheart, Charlotte, in 1944, a year before his discharge.
Fisher had a State College consulting business that specialized in marketing and public relations after retiring from radio.
He’s a member of the Westmoreland County chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame and the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
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