In 1974 there was a local newspaper owned by the well known Bill Callagy of Tower Hill. He hosted a Saturday morning show called Let’s Talk Sports. His co-host was Bob “Lefty” Lefebre and since they were former Lawrence High athletes featured LHS sports and athletes.
Along came a young out-of-towner that quickly got a pulse of the goings on in this area. His name was Roy Reiss and he really ran the way this half hour show was run. He was a young man who knew how a program should be run, when to stop for ads and how to handle the meter of the incoming calls and was really good at his craft.
He quickly learned of the good teams, the difference in leagues and his enthusiasm was tremendous.
Callagy had never written a column in his own paper, but when Roy decided to move on as is part of this business always looking to go to higher stations, with the dreams of making it to a major network, Bill dusted his old typewriter and wrote the following:
“Greater Lawrence lost one of the most dedicated writers in the area this week as Roy Reiss has taken a new position with Sherman Productions in Boston. He won’t be out of sports as his new position is well known for producing big shows on camping and trailers.” Bill continues, “Roy was and is a professional. Sometimes he was very controversial and at all times very truthful.
There are some people who aren’t going to be sorry to see him go, however, for Roy was a thorn in the side of those who feared change in the City and resented a so called outsider who had some exciting ideas about the community as well as local sports for both girls and boys teams. Yet Roy never attacked personalities; his only aim was to make things better and correct bad conditions.
Young men with dedicated purposes such as he had are hard to find in this day and age. The void left by his departure will be hard to find. He will be missed by many fans in the area especially the young athletes that he took such joy in talking about their games and schools.”
Callagy finishes by saying “being my first article in this paper I feel that I know how much I’ll miss him and his easy way to perform his duties.”
In the last issue of RUMBO I wrote of a poem about Roy Reiss written by a high school drop out that appeared in The Lawrence Journal in 1974. You can find it in the May 8th edition in our website www.rumbonews.com
By the way Roy lives in the Framingham area and after doing a sport show on Boston TV with John Dennis he is now out of the media world.
I’m sure he gets a big kick out of watching his son Mike on channel 4 as he talks with our local guy Dan Roche about Pro football. It is evident that Mike is always well prepared proving that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
This was January 24th 1974 in Callagy’s Lawrence Journal.
