(ATR) More than 500 people attended the funeral for Jim McKay in Baltimore. (Baltimore Sun)Speaking at the funeral for Olympic TV pioneer Jim McKay, son Sean McManus says his family is "totally overwhelmed by the amount of affection shown my dad". Broadcasters and sports greats gathered in a Baltimore cathedral Tuesday to celebrate a man who helped bring the Olympics to the age of TV.
Representatives from every American network to televise an Olympic Games attended the service at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. They recalled McKay's warmth, humor, love of his family and kindness to his fellow man.
"Jim McKay was the "Jim McKay was the Olympics", says ABC colleague Al Michaels. (ATR)Olympics," ABC broadcaster Al Michaels, told Around the Rings.
"Jim McKay made the Olympics. He was so human. I've always said he combined tremendous intellect with a big, great heart. Jim wasn't announcing, he was talking to you and with you. And I miss him desperately."
James K. McManus, who adopted the television persona Jim McKay, died June 7 of natural causes at his farm in nearby Monkton, in Maryland's horse country. He was 86 years old.
Many Olympic veterans said they learned how to cover the Games from McKay, himself.
"They believed in the Olympics as being this incredible unifying force," Dick Ebersol, NBC Sports chairman, told Around the Rings, referring both to McKay and his visionary boss, ABC Sports chief Roone Arledge.
"And I think they were the first to really make the entire production of the Olympics be about really getting to know the various competitors, without a sense of where they were from. NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol broke into the Olympics as a 19 year-old researcher working with McKay. (ATR)Yes, you knew what country they were from, but there weren't good guys and bad guys. And it's a legacy that I've tried to carry on now.
"I learned it from them. I was Jim's first researcher as a 19-year-old boy. And everything was about just getting it right, about treating people well, and the Olympics were the ultimate place to pull all that together."
McKay covered 11 Olympics for ABC, ending in Calgary in 1988. In 2002, he received special permission to join NBC's coverage of the Salt Lake City Olympics for his 12th Games.
"The Olympics, when he was sitting in the chair, the world was different," said CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz, who says McKay treated him like a son.
"We didn't know what it was like to go to all these far-reaching places around the world. We didn't even know the names of some of these countries."
McKay also brought the world - and the world of sport - to American television audiences as the intrepid host of ABC's Wide World of Sports. "Spanning the globe," as he said in the weekly introduction, he visited more than 40 countries, traveling an estimated 4 ½ million miles in 25 years to help viewers experience "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat."
"I never knew what long jump was until Jim McKay brought it into my living room," said Rob Carr, the Associated Press photographer who shot pictures at the funeral.
McKay’s work at the Munich Olympics was awarded an Emmy, the first given to a sportscaster. He broke the tragic news about the Israeli hostages with three simple words: "They're all gone."
"He defined the role of Olympic host," NBC’s Olympic host, Bob Costas, tells ATR.
"And he was the person who conveyed the most tragic news in Olympic history, and did it in a way that not only defined excellence as a broadcaster, but defined his personal humanity. I think it's appropriate that he's in the Olympic Hall of Fame. He's synonymous with the Olympics."
McKay's son Sean McManus, the president of CBS News and Sports, said his mother Margaret and sister Mary have been "completely and totally overwhelmed by the amount of affection shown my dad."
He said of his father, "it would mean the world to him to see the faces staring back now."
Ushers at the Cathedral estimated 500 people attended the service.
Fittingly, the tones of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, a recurring musical theme of the Olympic Games, accompanied the pallbearers escorting McKay’s casket down the nave.
McManus told tales of his father’s sense of humor. He remembers accompanying him to the Kentucky Derby when they saw Howard Cosell surrounded by about 50 reporters.
"He said, 'Jim, there is not a place in this city I can go to where they will leave me alone, no place I can go to be by myself,'" McManus recalled Cosell saying.
His father replied, "Howard, have you considered your room?"
Race car legend Jackie Stewart visited McKay in Monkton two days before he died.
"It was one of the finest days of my life," Stewart said. "We reminisced, we laughed, we were sentimental. Jim was as sharp as always.
Stewart said McKay carried a dignity with him, "a style and a manner."
Physically, they were both the same stature. He said they created the "guild of men of average height."
"Gary Player signed up immediately," Stewart said.
"Napoleon would have signed up... I saw someone on TV say, Jim McKay was no man of average height; he was a giant."
"Those of us in production were honored and blessed to have Jim with us," said Doug Wilson, an ABC producer and director since the 1960s. "He was going to put his verbal frosting on our cake."
Wilson said McKay "always passed the goosebump test." He described Saratoga Springs, site of fabled racing, as where "the rich come for the waters and the wagering."
Wilson said that when McKay wanted to see the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden as a spectator, an usher recognized him.
"Jim McKay, Margaret McKay with sonSean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports. (Baltimore Sun)you're here!" the usher said. "I thought you'd be on a mountaintop somewhere."
McKay’s grandson James Fontelieu said he asked him, "Pop, if you could change something, what would it be?’ He looked at me and said, "I wish I had played more golf."
But McManus said his father was a man who “had no regrets at all.”
He leaves behind gratitude as well as grief.
"Of all the superstars I've dealt with, whether in sports or news or entertainment over 40 years,” Ebersol said, “he was by far the best human being."
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