Saved by the Bell: Behind The Man, The Voice, The Legend

It’s the last Harvard game before the inexplicably keg-less armaggedon that will be Harvard-Yale takes over Harvard Stadium, and it’s gorgeous out. It’s also Take A Kid To The Game Day, and a small child on the Columbia side falls while scampering in the seats. He emerges, crying like a champion beneath the red Harvard banners that display Harvard’s championship history.

Banners? We have banners now?

Yes, those of you who make the trip to the Stadium once every two years in November will be pleasantly surprised to see the latest addition to the stadium. Up above the seats on one side of the glorious horseshoe that is Harvard Stadium are a series of championship banners that announce Harvard’s triumphs, beginning with 1961 and continuing all the way around to the open end and 2001. Ten sheets and 40 years of history and—if you’re a Columbia fan—10 more reasons to be depressed, reminders that its last and only Ivy championship was shared with Harvard in ’61.

For Chad Dale, the banners are anything but depressing. Dale’s face is young and bright, but his eyes are the eyes of decade upon decade of Harvard football history. As is his voice. Between his voice and his grandfather’s, a Charles Arthur Dale has been present in the booth for each of those championships and further back into the program’s illustrious history.

Dale can see the new banners as he remembers some of the ancient history they represent. And he remembers his grandfather, who announced some 400 games from 1933 to 1990—missing only two due to illness and the birth of a child.

“My grandfather had a much better voice, a much better cadence,” Dale says.

Chad grew up with Harvard football. He was a spotter for the team as a child. His cousin, David Anderson, joins him in the booth today and thinks about the similarities between the only two regular PA announcers Harvard football has known.

“A lot of the mannerisms are the same,” Anderson says. “It’s not speechy, nothing’s drawn out too long. It’s very businesslike and very clean.”

If you’ve been to the games, you know. There’s no “Let’s get ready to rumble” about Charles III’s announcing style. Yet it’s memorable. “That pass complete to number 19, Carl Morris. First down, Harvard.” Simple, but something about the voice’s distinctiveness stays with you. It’s an easygoing style that you wouldn’t expect Dale to consciously work at.

But for Charles Arthur Dale I, it was an entire philosophy.

“My grandfather believed that doing PA was supposed to be very simple and not loquacious,” Chad says.

Anderson elaborates. “He had a hard time with the word ‘sack.’ It took him years to finally say the word ‘sack.’ He thought saying the word ‘sack’ was sort of showy.”

“And an incomplete pass wasn’t an incomplete pass,” Chad adds. “It was a ‘pass that failed.’ There were some Charleyisms that were very funny.”

Many gentlemanly arts exist where you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find them. So do family traditions—here, thanks largely to Chad’s grandmother.

When Charles Dale passed away in 1991—after 57 years of calling football and track events for the Crimson—then-Athletic Director Bill Cleary ’56 and Assistant Athletic Director for Media Relations John Veneziano attended the wake. Chad remembers standing right next to his grandmother, ten feet away from the open casket.

“They came over and she put her hand on one of their shoulders and said, ‘Wouldn’t my grandson do a good job in Charlie’s spot?’”

Well, for obvious reasons, that ended the official search for a new PA man. The grandson has done the games since 1991—one of Harvard’s few endearing legacy admits.

“That’s a true story,” a grinning Dale says. “They didn’t have a choice, or they were going to have to deal with my grandmother. I think if it wasn’t for her, they’d replace me. It’s been great. It’s been a lot of fun.”

It’s after the game, and Dale talks a bit about the best players he’s seen during his time in the booth—Mike Giardi ’94, Isaiah Kaczyvenski ’00 and Morris—and eventually goes home, back to his family and his job as a partner in a Boston law firm. He’ll be back in two weeks for Harvard-Yale, and so will the banners and the kids and “That pass complete to Carl Morris, first down Harvard.” Only one of those will be for the last time.

—Staff writer Martin S. Bell can be reached at msbell@fas.harvard.edu.