Just say the name “Brownie” around the Illinois Valley and everyone knows who you’re talking about.

For more than five decades, Mike Brown has been a fixture on the sidelines of area sporting events in the radio booth and press boxes for WLPO Radio.

St. Bede’s last football game this season was also the last of Brownie’s long run. Only a two-year stay in college at Western Illinois has kept his streak from stretching 50 years continuous.

He has elected to hang up his mike and his trusty stats sheets. He said some recent eye surgeries have made it difficult to see the action on the field.

He’s enjoyed covering high school sports for the innocence and purism of the game that the high school athletes bring.

“The memories come flooding back. You think what was the best thing and then something else pops in your mind,” he said. “When you think about going on this long, you don’t do it alone. You don’t do it without the cooperation of the coaches and the ADs.

“But most of all it’s the kids. I just enjoy watching the kids represent the school and not be the prima donnas you see especially in the pros and sometimes in college.”

Former WLPO sports director Lanny Slevin, Brown’s longtime broadcast partner along with Rick Sipovic, said “Brownie” is an Illinois Valley treasure.

“He’s really one of the most dedicated guys I’ve seen and I’ve been around because every time we needed something, about St. Bede in particular, he was right there,” Slevin said. “A lot of times he just called in a report and didn’t get paid for it. He was there because he enjoyed the games. He’s been at it for a long time.”

Slevin joked it was Brownie who got the trio going in the mornings in Champaign during the state basketball tournament.

“Just to show you what kind of guy he is. Sip and I would be sleeping and Brownie would tip-toe out and get coffee and a morning newspaper that talked about all the games in Champaign,” Slevin said. “And (he’d come back and) say, ‘OK, guys it’s time to go.’ We’d say a few things and Brownie would always be there with that kind of kindness.”

Brownie got his start writing up Utica Little League games for the Utica News, the former weekly newspaper.

“They wanted to put something in about the little league and I said, ‘Well, I umpire.’ So I made up scorecards using carbon paper so I wouldn’t have to keep on writing. I had somebody keep the score for me. I’d write up a little summary for the paper.”

Then Jeff Green, sports editor of the NewsTribune, asked him to write a story on St. Bede’s undefeated sophomore football team in 1972.

“I was a senior at St Bede and he published it in the NewsTribune,” Brown said. “Then that winter, (Green) couldn’t get a stringer to go to St. Bede-Kankakee Eastridge. I said, ‘I don’t have a ride. I’ll ask Father Kevin (Gorman) if I can get a ride on the bus.’ And he said, ‘Sure Michael, We always have room for one more.’”

That assignment carried over to getting a job for WGSY Radio doing sports with Damon Cattani.

“I did the Hall Red Devils football games play by play my first year,” Brown said. “Kelly Kane was the coach. Hall went undefeated, 8-0-1, and the game they tied was with Geneseo. Nobody beat Geneseo in those days.”

Brownie, who has been inducted into the St. Bede Sports Hall of Fame as well as the IBCA Hall of Fame as a “friend of basketball” and been a fixture on the PA at the DePue Boat Races, began calling in reports for WLPO in 1979 and continued through this fall.

A 1973 St. Bede graduate, Brownie played football a couple years for the Bruins but was unable to continue due to severe asthma. Bruins coach John Gaughn asked him if wanted to be involved, but he didn’t want to be a manager. So he became a scout.

“I went with my German teacher, Alex Hueneburg to go scouting. I got to know football real good and know all the insights more than the average fan,” he said. “Got to know the plays and formations. The technical side, I guess. I never would have known about football if I didn’t have that year thanks to John Gaughn.”

After the final game this year, Brownie walked down to the field to talk to the coaches and all of the players came up to him to tell him thanks and wish him well.

“Yeah, I’ll admit, I about lost it. Got a little emotional. Never expected that,” he said.

Brownie doesn’t know what he’ll do on Friday nights next year, but plans to watch his eight great nieces and nephews more in their sports. Knowing Brownie, it will be hard to keep him away from the Bruins football games. He even says, if someone needs a fill in on the radio, “I may have one more game in me.”

Kevin Hieronymus has been the BCR Sports Editor since 1986. Contact him at khieronymus@bcrnews.com