Wes Strader, The Voice of the Hilltoppers

Saturday, David Cross and I were at Western Kentucky University’s E.A. Diddle Arena in Bowling Green and watched both Hilltoppers men’s and ladies’ basketball teams win their games, over Stony Brook and Louisville, respectively.

At half-time of the men’s game, I was walking through one of the tunnels when I heard someone call out my name from the opposite end. It was the legendary voice of the Hilltoppers, Wes Strader. It has been a few years since I had last met up with him and I was surprised, and charmed, that this legendary broadcaster remembered me.

In 2010, I was at Diddle, sitting with Sid Scott and family in the front row behind the broadcast tables and waiting to do a broadcast in the boys] regional tournament.

On the opposite side of the arena, up at the very top was the Big Red Radio Network press box. I had been a visitor there a few times in previous years and on one occasion, two or three years earlier, had met Strader in person.

He knew all about the radio broadcasters in this area, the ones I had grown up with: Sid, my dad, Ray Mullinix, Welby Hoover and his family, and Steve Staples and his son, Stephen. We had chatted for some time that day as we sat and watched WKU pay tribute to past players and coaches, including players from the 1971 team, like Clarence Glover and Jim McDaniels, plus the great Darrel Carrier and coach Jim Richards.

Before that day, I might have spoken on the phone with Wes maybe twice in my life.

In 2010, as we sat there at courtside awaiting our turn to broadcast, I looked to my left and noticed that Wes was making his way toward our area. I figured he had spotted Sid from the press box and was coming to chat with him, but he stopped directly in front of me and said, “Randy? I thought that was you!”

Well, I sat up a little straighter as he continued, “I was up in the press box, looked down here and thought it was you.” By then, I was sitting up a whole lot straighter, and pretty sure my head started to swell. After all, I was sitting beside one legend and had another legend standing in front of me saying that he had spotted ME from across the arena and had made his way down and across to where we were sitting. I remember thinking that “I had officially arrived!”

Wes and I share similar heart-related issues, so Saturday, in the tunnel, we talked about that.

He had suffered a heart attack in 2003 that required stents. I told him about my issues from 2013 and congratulated him on his induction into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2014 (thanks to Clinton County’s own Al Cross, who played a major roll in making that happen) .

He told me to say hi to Sid and after we shook hands, I went back to courtside to get ready to watch the second half and he headed off somewhere to eat oysters, courtesy of a staff member.

Wes Strader was to WKU what Cawood Ledford was to UK. So, when I am at one end of the tunnel at E.A. Diddle Arena and he is at the other end, and he yells out my name, it is rather humbling, to say the least.

He spent 36 years (1964-2000) calling play-by-play for Hilltopper football and men’s basketball and was behind the microphone for some of the most memorable moments in WKU history.

Today, he hosts a call-in show after men’s basketball games.

Randy Speck