Radio and Sportscasting Career
Gillis was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and his family moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, when he was still a boy. After attending Holy Family High School in that city, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II in the Pacific Theater of operations. At war's end, he attended Boston's Leland Powers School of Broadcasting on the GI Bill and began a career in radio broadcasting at New Bedford's WBSM-AM in 1949, becoming that station's first sports director. In 1951, he joined the on-air staff of Boston's WHDH-AM 850, where he hosted music programs before focusing exclusively on sports.
WHDH at the time was the flagship station of the Boston Red Sox, and carried Boston Celtics basketball, Boston Bruins hockey and Harvard University football during the autumn and winter months. Gillis hosted pregame coverage of Red Sox games — his "Warmup Time" five-minute segment often revisited great moments in baseball history – and was a color commentator on Bruins and Celtics games. During the 1957 season, he joined the Red Sox' broadcast team when the primary announcer, Curt Gowdy, was sidelined for the year by a back injury. Gillis also called New England Patriots preseason. The most famous play-by-play single game he called was the 29-29 tie 1968 Harvard–Yale football game. A color kinescope of the telecast was featured prominently as the basis for the 2008 documentary film Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, so called because Harvard came from three touchdowns behind to tie on a two-point conversion with only seconds left to play. In addition, Gillis hosted a weekly sports roundtable radio show, called "Voice of Sports," that featured sportswriters Bill Liston and Tim Horgan from the Boston Herald-Traveler (which owned WHDH) and other personalities, such as longtime Pittsburgh Pirates scout Chick Whalen and NBC sports producer Joe Costanza. During the mid-to-late 1960s, he was the play-by-play announcer for a limited schedule of Boston Celtic games on WHDH-TV.
Read more about this topic: Don Gillis (sportscaster)
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