Tag: FAMILY

Dicky Martin’s passing leaves an irreplaceable void in Tomcat sports

The sound coming from the radio was more static than voice — unrecognizable, unfamiliar. It wasn’t what it should have been.

Driving home to northern Kentucky after watching the first quarter of Ashland’s game with Rowan County two weeks ago — on the night the famous JAWS team was being honored — I searched the dial for the Tomcats’ broadcast and finally landed on it.

Or did I?

The announcers were doing a fine job, especially considering Ashland was up 48-0 by halftime. But it wasn’t the same. Because it wasn’t Dicky Martin — the unmistakable voice of the Tomcats — calling the game from the Putnam Stadium press box that bears his and his father’s name.

Dicky Martin provided Ashland with 50 years of radio broadcasting. He passed away Oct. 15.

Dicky wasn’t there because he was in the hospital, locked in the fight of his life — a fight he sadly lost to cancer Wednesday night. Even knowing he wouldn’t be on the air, instinctively turning the dial to find him felt like something that should still work. For half a century, it always had. Entering his 50th season as Ashland’s play-by-play man, he had missed only two games.

I tried to listen. My mind wouldn’t let me. I turned it off.

Ashland is a place steeped in tradition, and Dicky Martin was part of that tradition’s fabric. The Martin family — Dicky and his father, Dick — gave Ashland 73 years of Tomcat broadcasts between them. People like to say no one is irreplaceable. But when it comes to Ashland Tomcat sports, Dicky Martin proved that saying wrong.

Born with a silver microphone

Some people are born with a silver spoon. Dicky was born with a silver microphone.

His father, Dick Martin, moved the family from Huntington to Ashland in 1952 and started broadcasting Tomcat games on WCMI the next year. He was a sharp businessman who understood that community radio needed sports — and that Ashland needed its voice.

Both Martins had a similar style: blunt, passionate, fiercely loyal. They never hesitated to call out poor play or questionable officiating — all through maroon-tinted glasses. Dicky often said, “There’s an on-and-off switch on your radio if you don’t like what you hear.”

He could be hard on the Tomcats, but no one else better be. Criticize his team, and you were taking on family.

Dick Martin became as much an icon as his son would later be. He even served as Ashland’s mayor, but it was his radio work — and his love for the Tomcats — that defined him.

Dicky once laughed recalling a moment from his childhood when his dad waved a handkerchief at a referee. “The ref came over and said, ‘You got something to say?’ Dad said, ‘Here, talk right into the microphone.’”

The referee rolled his eyes and went back to the game. Soon enough, the calls evened out.

That was Dick Martin — unfiltered, bold, and impossible to ignore.

Learning the craft

Dicky learned early that preparation mattered. His parents made him listen to recordings of his voice and work on his diction. “I had that Ashland twang,” he told me once. “They made me pronounce and enunciate until I got it right.”

Few were ever more prepared behind a mic than Dicky Martin. He could deliver a sharp one-liner at just the right moment — often unrehearsed, sometimes regretted, but always memorable.

“It’s humbling,” he said, “that people bring radios to the games just to listen.”

In his early days, his passion sometimes got him in trouble. He was banned once from the Boyd County Middle School gym. Some Tomcat fans didn’t always agree with his takes, but they still listened — often through headsets in the stands, wanting his voice to accompany what they were seeing.

His first broadcast came in 1973 when his father pretended to lose his voice and handed the mic to Dicky during a Raceland–Holy Family game. Dicky had just graduated from Ashland the year before. By 1975, he was the full-time voice of the Tomcats.

The rest, as they say, was history.

A voice shaped by legends

Dicky Martin became emotional when he learned the press box would carry the name of his father and him.

Dicky often said he learned from three of the best: his father, UK legend Cawood Ledford, and Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman. “My dad was the best,” he said. “I learned from him, from Cawood, and I love to listen to Marty. He’s the best one living.”

Patterned after greats, yes — but Dicky was one of a kind.

“I’ve mellowed a lot,” he told me a few years ago. “I’m kind of like a fan in a way. When a guy misses a call, the fans go, ‘Oooooooh!’ I just get to do it over the air.”

The “Three D’s” and lasting friendships

This story isn’t complete without mentioning his longtime sidekick, David “Dirk” Payne, who passed away a few years ago. Dicky loved him deeply. “There aren’t many men I love more than him,” he said. “When my dad died, Dirk thought it was me. He had a stroke that day. One day I lost my father and damn near lost Dirk, too.”

Dirk and Dicky on the air were Ashland’s equivalent to Marty and Joe with the Reds. You never wanted to miss a second.

Dicky Martin with some friends from left: Mark Maynard, Greg Jackson, Dicky, Donna Suttle and Steve Conley.

Longtime fan Donna Suttle was another dear friend. She called them the “Three D’s” — Dicky, Dirk and Donna. Her heart is broken now that trio is down to one.

He had many more friends in Ashland. Everybody knew of Dicky Martin and his love for the Tomcats.

Beyond the Tomcats

Dicky’s voice wasn’t confined to Ashland. His career took him to Soldier Field, the Gator Bowl, Ohio State’s “Shoe,” and RFK Stadium while calling games for the semipro West Virginia Rockets. He worked Morehead State basketball games during Wayne Martin’s coaching era, which took him to Madison Square Garden and two NCAA tournaments.

But his heart was always at home.

“My two favorite places are Putnam Stadium and Anderson Gym,” he said. “I love those places.”

He had been to every state basketball tournament since 1976 — and his father took him to his first in 1961, when Ashland won it all. He was just seven years old then, but he never forgot.

Football was his true passion. “I never dreamed I’d be doing this as long as I have,” he said. “But I loved every second of it.”

So did we, Dicky.

So did we.

Dicky Martin often said his favorite place to be was Putnam Stadium where he broadcasted Ashland Tomcat football for 50 years.

Mason Branham: The Everywhere Man who will be missed by everybody

Mason Branham was the constant in the landscape of Greenup County sports.  He was the Everywhere Man, showing up seemingly at several places at the same time with camera and notepad in hand and a pen or pencil behind the ear.

Yet he was also unassuming, wishing to remain far from the spotlight and he blended in like the orange in Raceland uniforms. He reserved the spotlight for Greenup County’s young athletes, the one man they could all rally around and appreciate. It mattered not who won or lost, if you were boy or girl, if your team was good or bad. Mason was there, snapping photos, taking notes, making memories.

Anybody who ever played anything in Greenup County knew Mason, the Everywhere Man. There may have been a game-winning touchdown in Raceland and a game-saving tackle in Russell at the same time yet, somehow, someway, Mason had a photograph of both plays. He was uncanny that way.

Mason Branham, a longtime weekly newspaperman in Greenup County, died last week at 76.

It was with much sadness that I read of his recent passing. It closed another chapter on weekly newspapers. If there was ever a Hall of Fame devoted to weekly newspapermen, Mason would have surely been a charter member. I’m not sure how many years he crafted his trade while working first in Carter County and much of his career in Greenup County at weekly newspapers, but he was around when I started at The Daily Independent and when I left the ADI in 2018 and the area in 2022, doing his thing better than anybody ever did. He is irreplaceable.

We had a great relationship, with a lot in common. Both of us loved what we did (and I still do). But I’m not sure anybody anywhere loved what he did more than Mason Branham. It was never for personal praise though. He did not put bylines on his stories or credit lines on his photographs. He was just there. Reporting at meetings, keeping statistics at games and providing thousands upon thousands of photographs of those events over the years.

Mason marched to his own drumbeat, that’s for sure, but he had a love for Greenup County like few others and the schools in that area should put him in their hall of fames posthumously. He deserves that much.

I had many conversations with Mason and he was always enlightening and extremely smart. I did not realize until reading his obituary that he was the valedictorian at Olive Hill High School in 1966 and knew so much history about Carter County and Greenup County. Mason could have done a lot of things in life but he chose journalism, or maybe it chose him. Either way, it was a love affair for a lifetime.

He did not get rich or famous working for weekly newspapers but that was never a goal for him. Mason was there for the pure joy of it, for the chase of getting that key photograph or for writing about that game-winning play. He was a welcome sight at any gymnasium, football field, baseball field, soccer pitch, Little League game or anything else when he arrived with camera, notepad and a pen behind his ear.

Mason was also a man of strong faith and he regularly delivered meals for Greenup County Meals on Wheels. He did that job without fanfare too because he was not doing it for recognition but to be a servant. His life was full of servant-like activities. Members of Beech Street Christian Church are serving as pallbearers. That says a lot about the man as well.

Mason will be laid to rest this week but his kindness and good deeds throughout an illustrious career will not be forgotten by the lives he touched from behind the lens. Whether it was the photographs from the County Fair or the countless Little League games, or the meals that he carried to households of senior citizens, Mason was there.

He was the Everywhere Man if there ever was one.