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Topic: For Pittsburgh Sports Fans - Rest in Peace Dear Myron Return to archive Page: 1 2
27th February 2008 09:59 AM
Highwire Rob This is very sad news to begin our morning...

Myron Cope dead at 79
By The Tribune-Review
Wednesday, February 27, 2008


quote:
His high-pitched screech was the most unlikely to serve as the voice of Steeler Nation.

Yet for more than three decades, Pittsburgh's football faithful muted their televisions and turned up the radio to hear the beloved icon known simply as Myron.

Hall of Fame Steelers broadcaster Myron Cope died this morning at a nursing home in Mt. Lebanon, said Joe Gordon, a former Steelers executive and a longtime friend of Cope's. Cope had been treated for respiratory problems and heart failure in recent months, Gordon said.

He was 79.

The diminutive creator of the "Terrible Towel," Cope entertained and informed fans with his manic style of color-commentary on the Steelers Radio Network from 1970 until June 2005.

"You would have to say that in the history of Steelers lore, he is certainly the voice of the organization," former coach Chuck Noll said when various health ailments forced Cope to retire.

Cope is survived by two grown children, Danny and Elizabeth. His late wife, Mildred, died Sept. 20, 1994, after a long illness.

An acclaimed newspaper and magazine writer who hosted his own nightly sports talk show on WTAE Radio for 22 years, Cope said he wanted to be remembered as a writer.

He blended a knowledge of the game with an endearing sense of self-deprecating humor, once quipping that his nasal voice "falls upon the public's ears like china crashing from shelves in an earthquake."

Through the Steelers' first four Super Bowl Championships, the listening public celebrated Cope's quirky on-air expressions " "Yoi!" "Double-Yoi!" and "Hmm-hah!" are entrenched in the local lexicon.

"Myron is Pittsburgh," former Steelers coach Bill Cowher once said. "I remember when I first got the job here in 1992 having to go down to his studio and do his show that night and thinking, 'I remember listening to this guy when I was in my kitchen in Crafton.'

"My dad would be out there at night listening to his talk show and I would be thinking, 'Why would you listen to that?' Then, I found myself listening to that."

Cope invented the best-known symbol of Steelers' pride, the Terrible Towel. The idea came before a playoff game in December 1975, when his boss at WTAE wanted a gimmick that would get the crowd at Three Rivers Stadium more involved.

Fans still wildly wave the black-and-gold cloths at Heinz Field and in bars and living rooms across the country. Cope sold the trademark for the towels in 1996 to Allegheny Valley School, an institution for the mentally and physically challenged. The school has brought in more than $800,000 from sales of the towel.

"It became something that everybody in Pittsburgh could rally around," Noll said of the invention's impact.

Cope was born Myron Sydney Kopelman on Jan. 23, 1929, in Pittsburgh. He graduated from Taylor Allderdice High School -- briefly boxing at the age of 16 -- and the University of Pittsburgh before launching a career in print journalism.

He started out in newspapers, working first at the Erie Times. In the summer of 1951, Cope was hired by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where an editor suggested that his last name sounded too Jewish and that he shorten it. As Cope recounted in his autobiography "Double Yoi!", the editor began shuffling through the phone book and stopped at "Cope."

In 1960, Cope left the Post-Gazette to try his luck at freelance writing. He would always remember what his editor at the newspaper, Al Abrams, told him before he left: "Kid, you'll starve. You'll be back in six months."

Instead, Cope became a successful writer for Sports Illustrated and the Saturday Evening Post. During his time at SI, he wrote widely acclaimed pieces on the likes of Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) and sportscaster Howard Cosell. Cope was one of only two writers under contract for SI, the other being George Plimpton.

In 1968, Cope changed courses again and took a part-time job at WTAE Radio. He parlayed that into his job with the Steelers broadcast team in 1970 and into his career as a radio talk-show host.

Cope battled health problems for the last several years of his career, including severe arthritis, a chronically bad back, pneumonia and throat problems. He missed the team's first three exhibition games of the 2004 season while recovering from throat surgery and pneumonia, then had to leave a game that season because of the after-affects of a concussion he suffered at home the night before, the result of a fall.

Prior to that, Cope had missed only five quarters of Steelers football: One quarter of a game early in his career to attend his brother-in-law's funeral and a game in 1994 after his wife died.

Steelers play-by-play announcer Bill Hillgrove said in 2005 it was hard to see his longtime broadcast partner struggle near the end of his career.

It would have been even harder to replace him. So the Steelers left Cope's seat unfilled.

"We're going to have to work harder because nobody worked harder than Myron," Hillgrove said when Cope retired. "We're going to have to assume the responsibility of having his eye for news and knowledge of the game's history."

When Cope conducted his last radio show in 2005, the final caller was a first-time caller who had been waiting 13 years to say what Cope meant to her family.

One night, she said, her family was sitting at the dinner table and Cope was signing off. He began his familiar closing with, "This is Myron Cope " and the woman's eight-month-old son chimed in "on sports." They were the child's first back-to-back words.

"That was perfect," Cope said after the show. "The kid's first words -- 'On sports' -- I never could have planned such a perfect last call."
27th February 2008 10:29 AM
sirmoonie Myron Cope on sports.....
27th February 2008 11:56 AM
TampabayStone RIP
27th February 2008 12:22 PM
gimmekeef RIP..The last of a breed of blatant homers loved by his fans...Have a Cope terrible towel framed in my office from the One For The Thumb vs Seattle.....
27th February 2008 04:27 PM
TomL RIP, I remember so many times listing to him. This is Myron Cope on sports.
27th February 2008 05:14 PM
sirmoonie I played CYO hoops, and many of our games were strangely enough at the Jew Community Center in Squirrel Hill. Cope would show up at games and even announce for a few minutes to give everyone a thrill.

Another time he came to my school and told all of us, even the black kids, never to do drugs. The guy was a complete spastic mufti, but he had a serious passion for sports, that I find admirable.
27th February 2008 08:40 PM
robpop Rest in peace, Myron Kopelmann. You ere the Nation's leader.

Myron had just to do with the Steelers mystique as Bradshaw. He also loved his booze.

The Father of the terrible towel will be missed. Myron gave every cent he made from the terrbile towel to charity, and it will continue to stay that way.

Myron was a great yinzer, football fan, and Jew.
27th February 2008 08:44 PM
TampabayStone
quote:
robpop wrote:
Rest in peace, Myron Kopelmann. You ere the Nation's leader.

Myron had just to do with the Steelers mystique as Bradshaw. He also loved his booze.

The Father of the terrible towel will be missed. Myron gave every cent he made from the terrbile towel to charity, and it will continue to stay that way.

Myron was a great yinzer, football fan, and Jew.



and American!

Photobucket
27th February 2008 08:46 PM
robpop



Myron Cope

cope
[Edited by robpop]
27th February 2008 08:55 PM
robpop I've seen Myron and Bill Buckley speak in person in my time. Seriously I'd take Myron anytime over Buckley.
27th February 2008 08:58 PM
robpop
quote:
TampabayStone wrote:


and American!

Photobucket



Wait until Doug Williams croaks. I piss all over his grave.
27th February 2008 09:04 PM
TampabayStone
quote:
robpop wrote:


Wait until Doug Williams croaks. I piss all over his grave.



I'm hurt. It's the only American flag I had in the database..
Just wanted to pay me respects..

Photobucket
Besides who don't love Doug Williams?
27th February 2008 09:21 PM
robpop
quote:
TampabayStone wrote:


I'm hurt. It's the only American flag I had in the database..
Just wanted to pay me respects..

Photobucket
Besides who don't love Doug Williams?




My good friend and fella yinzer HW Rob created this thread, out of respect for the leader of the nation and look what you did to it. Just look.
27th February 2008 09:26 PM
robpop I was in an elevator with Myron several years ago. He was as friendly as can be. Maybe because he was sauced. But he did give me a head on a stick of him like the guys use on PTI.
27th February 2008 09:30 PM
robpop
27th February 2008 10:03 PM
robpop Just in case all of you non yinzers did not know about Myron. Most Pittsburgh channels are running an hour long tribute to Myron now. In Prime time.
27th February 2008 10:05 PM
harman will that towel bullshit die also
hate that damn yellow rag
burn it i say!!!!!!!!!!
27th February 2008 10:14 PM
TampabayStone
quote:
robpop wrote:


My good friend and fella yinzer HW Rob created this thread, out of respect for the leader of the nation and look what you did to it. Just look.



Put up a beautiful pic in his honor!!! Heray TBS!

Photobucket

27th February 2008 10:16 PM
robpop
quote:
harman wrote:
will that towel bullshit die also
hate that damn yellow rag
burn it i say!!!!!!!!!!



asswipe.
27th February 2008 10:18 PM
robpop
quote:
TampabayStone wrote:


Put up a beautiful pic in his honor!!! Heray TBS!

Photobucket





My cousin is a CPA also. He is buzy as fuck now because it is tax season. What is your excuse?
27th February 2008 10:35 PM
sirmoonie
quote:
robpop wrote:




Awesome! Hadn't seen him or heard his voice in years. What a character.
27th February 2008 11:04 PM
robpop
quote:
sirmoonie wrote:


Awesome! Hadn't seen him or heard his voice in years. What a character.



The man inducted Frank Sinatra into Franco's Italian Dego Army. Goddamn it.
27th February 2008 11:20 PM
sirmoonie
quote:
robpop wrote:


The man inducted Frank Sinatra into Franco's Italian Dego Army. Goddamn it.


I did not know that. Tambellini's?

Was Myron really a boozer? I think I remember hearing that back in the day, but since I was surrounded by boozers then, it didn't really mean much.
28th February 2008 02:33 AM
TampabayStone
quote:
robpop wrote:


My cousin is a CPA also. He is buzy as fuck now because it is tax season. What is your excuse?



I gave it up. I was a CPA for ten years and tried for all ten to get out. I just do some of the Hood's taxes cheap. Ten minute returns for fidy$.. I am now a Entrepreneur.... Still have the CPA & Macc. Whatcha you do Yinzer?

Photobucket
28th February 2008 02:35 AM
TampabayStone
quote:
robpop wrote:


The man inducted Frank Sinatra into Franco's Italian Dego Army. Goddamn it.



My Grandpa used to call Franco, The Italian Nigger. Nice. He liked Mariano & Testerverde. I was surprised at 1st about Vinny, but I figured it out pretty quickly.
28th February 2008 07:51 PM
robpop
quote:
sirmoonie wrote:

I did not know that. Tambellini's?

Was Myron really a boozer? I think I remember hearing that back in the day, but since I was surrounded by boozers then, it didn't really mean much.



I'm trying to find the video of Frank Sinatra becoming a member of Franco's Army, but I can't find it. WTAE (channel 4) showed it last night.

Yeah Myron was a boozer. He had a DUI within the last few years. But then again the Nation was his life.
28th February 2008 07:52 PM
robpop
quote:
TampabayStone wrote:


I gave it up. I was a CPA for ten years and tried for all ten to get out. I just do some of the Hood's taxes cheap. Ten minute returns for fidy$.. I am now a Entrepreneur.... Still have the CPA & Macc. Whatcha you do Yinzer?

Photobucket




I sell drugs. Seriously.
28th February 2008 08:31 PM
TampabayStone
quote:
robpop wrote:



I sell drugs. Seriously.



Pharms? You have a Region of Yinzer Doctors you wine and dine? No wonder you know where all the good tittie bars are, negro.
28th February 2008 08:53 PM
robpop
quote:
TampabayStone wrote:


Pharms? You have a Region of Yinzer Doctors you wine and dine? No wonder you know where all the good tittie bars are, negro.



Yeah, I'm gettin' out of the biz though. I'll be making a change soon.
28th February 2008 08:56 PM
TampabayStone
quote:
robpop wrote:


Yeah, I'm gettin' out of the biz though. I'll be making a change soon.




Cool! Hope you find what you love to do!
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