Athletic greatness comes in all shapes and all sizes.

It doesn't come naturally, but is achieved from hard work diligence and adversity along the journey.

There's opportunity and there's always struggle.

There is triumph and there is defeat.

And there is always a story behind the glory.

Most writers don't get into the sports journalism business for the accolades, but instead their careers are fueled by a passion for the sports they cover.

For veteran sportswriter Bruce Brown, outstanding Penmanship has given him honorary status among the state's top sports journalists.

37 years at the Lafayette Advertiser, most of those as sports editor, I've got to tell you, over the years, even though we have been in different places at different times, I have so admired your work.

I've so admired your wordsmithing.

I've so admired the way you will take a so-called minor event and turn it into a major read.

You intended to be a broadcaster, though, right?

I mean, that was your first aspiration.

I thought that was an avenue to go first, arrive in college and turned out I took a look around Lafayette and all four spots were taken and pretty well handled by those who were there.

And I ended up not major in journalism at all, but liberal arts English.

I just love the language and just like studying plays and manuscripts like that.

And so I set about looking for opportunities print wise.

And one opened, it was my good luck or whatever you call it.

to understand a Hall of Famer like Bruce Brown, those who know him best should talk about him.

Bruce is a pro, but I was amazed at how much he could do in such a short period of time.

He's doing it because he's passionate about it and he cared about it.

And Bruce is the type of guy you need.

Maybe it's the event that kicks off the latest or tips off the latest.

That's the one that you send him to because you know that you're going to get that copy probably before others turn in theirs.

It's going to be clean.

It's going to be precise.

It's going to be accurate.

And it's going to tell the story.

I still don't think there's anybody around that can knock out a game story.

A sidebar and a notebook and have it all done an hour after the final whistle, an hour after the final horn.

You know, I want to go back before that, though, because I found it very interesting to learn that you, as a high school student, actually wrote a fictitious at the time story about LSU and Wyoming in a Sugar Bowl.

And it was eerily the same result in the actual game that you had written about fictitiously.

Tell me about that.

It was kind of fun.

I they were going to play while me.

They were heavily favored, of course, and I wrote that final would be 21-13 or 20-13, but I wrote this beforehand.

I said that Jerry Boister would have his Sugar Bowl record length field goal, and he did.

And I had had Tommy Trigger Allen running for 100 yards and a couple of touchdowns, and I don't think I got it wrong.

Glenn Smith was the running back real issue that day.

Trigger couldn't make and whatever.

And so it turned out within a point of getting it right.

So would you care to give me some lottery ticket numbers before we talk about after the show?

Yeah.

I mean, that was remarkable.

And your dad read it, and this was something you cranked out at home and your dad read it and said, Son, that's pretty good, didn't he?

Yeah.

Yeah, it is.

He was a petroleum engineer and he said, That's something I wish my finished in at one point doing that kind of thing.

Let me go back to what I said originally somewhat, because I really have a lot of admiration for the way you approached small school events.

Track and field volleyball.

Soccer.

Tennis.

And wrote it with the same passion that you would a Super Bowl game.

And I want to use this phraseology because I think this was is marvelous.

And it was very early in your career and I want to see if you remember this.

You describe the high school basketball game between Pecan Island and Meaux two of the smallest schools in Louisiana.

And you said it was played in a gym that resembled a coffee can halfway out of the ground.

That's been decades ago.

And when I read those words, I'm thinking what a tremendous description.

I mean, that that lives in my mind when I read those words.

And that's the type of writer you were.

Where did it come from?

I guess attention to detail.

It just I was charmed by the the size of it.

The it was a very important game in the district B. Two schools that no longer exist.

One town that may not exist for all I know, but it just they had like a few rows of seats, bleachers and a stage at the end.

The other third, the typical the other time and had little kids playing in front of in front of the bleachers during during the game little baby children.

And if a kid had to inbound the ball, he'd have to carefully move the children out of the way so he could inbound the ball at just I like I liked it.

You were able to capture in words and burn it into people's minds when they read it.

The atmosphere, what it was like to be there.

It put me in the seat.

Your stories put me in the seat of that arena.

I congratulate you on that.

The kick that we got on that was a walk in and everybody in Meaux and Pecan Island knows each other.

Everybody knows everybody else is going to be there that night.

So we walk in and my wife and I, and she's doing a play by play.

You're going to talk to Ricky Broussard after and it's just going from I said, the advertiser's coverage game.

So sort of talk to your college scout.

I think it was not a lot of college scouts here maybe so they the scouting, you know, not a whole lot of those guys signed anywhere.

But this longtime author, an award winning writer and editor of the Lafayette Daily Advertiser, has also mentored many of the best in this state, including veteran media personality Kevin Foote, I was a junior in high school and applied for a part time job at the Daily Advertiser in 1983.

And Bruce allowed me to do it even though I probably was a little too young to do it.

And he always had a value of education.

His wife was a teacher, and Bruce gave me that job under one condition that I would graduate from college.

And the only reason that I graduated college was the promise that I made from Bruce in 1983, because I already was working full time with him at The Daily Advertiser.

And so there was a lot of time there where he could have got bitter over certain things and never did.

And we always have treated each other with a lot of respect and always appreciated that about Bruce.

Someone like Bruce has forced me in a good way to learn more about other sports.

Me He has been an absolute champion.

When we get in that meeting room and we discussed the Hall of Fame class and he will sit there and talk to you about a great tennis coach.

For a weightlifting coach or a weightlifting competitor.

I give a big credit to him for making sure that we are able to do that.

It's a sad fact in today's journalism world that many people who have done well in sports are let go.

The industry is obviously congealing in terms of employment.

So, Bruce, I know when you left the sports side of it, you went to work on the news editorial side of the paper and engage the readers, just as you had on the sports side for so many years.

And I know there's one story in particular that's very, very important to you, and it was chronicling the visit of elderly World War Two veterans on a trip to honor their comrades.

Tell me about that story and what it meant to you personally and how you got engaged in that in a way that you didn't think you really would.

It was called Louisiana Honor Air, and the idea was to gather up hundreds of World War Two veterans in a state of Louisiana to fly them free to Washington, D.C.

for a one day outing and to see their memorial World War two memorial on the plaza in D.C.

And I was fortunate enough to go to the first one and the second one and end up going seven out of 21 flights with them each to have a little different change to a different reaction from the little guys.

And they didn't pass it.

The look on their face when they got to the airport in D.C.

and there was a band waiting for them balloons, the whole nine yards, showing them how much they were appreciated.

Then we get back to Lafayette and it's a packed airport of people wanting to to wish them goodwill.

And it particularly felt to me that my dad never had that opportunity.

He died in 2000 at age 90.

He had fought in World War Two.

He was in the Navy and it just never occurred that he would have had the chance to do that finish a couple of years later.

So it had special meaning for me to be there among them and just to hear their stories and to watch them recognize that people did care that they were there.

There were many years when the Louisiana Sportswriters Association was regularly handing the advertiser staff and Brown in particular, certificates and plaques from the annual writing contest.

I think a lot of the new media, social media and so forth writing quality is not valued nearly as much as it used to be.

With him, it's still about quality writing and he still does it as well as anybody.

You know.

Later in his career, Bruce even wore news and he learned to adjust.

Some of us go kicking and screaming, and I think Bruce kind fits and threw like me in that category.

You kick and scream through some of it, but then you just learn to adjust.

And I think he made the adjustment like we all did in 2023.

Bruce received the highest accolade that a Louisiana sportswriter can achieve, recognized by his peers as a recipient of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Distinguished Award in sports journalism.

You know, you mention special meaning, the millions of words that you have written in your journalism career.

Sports and news side have had a special meaning to the readers.

Congratulations on your induction into the 2023 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.

Its very deserved.

Thank you.