Jack Lloyd ’58, who became one of the most familiar and distinctive voices of Notre Dame sports in nearly 50 years as a public address announcer, died in September after a brief illness. He was 79.
During Lloyd’s long tenure, he was known as a consummate professional, an all the more impressive reputation because he was never paid.
He spent 36 years as the home arena’s voice of Notre Dame basketball, adding his idiosyncratic cadence to names from Sid Catlett ’71 to Pat Garrity ’98 — the Orlando Woolridge ’81, Kelly Tripucka ’81 and John Paxson ’83 eras being especially rich in that regard.
Lloyd also served as Notre Dame Stadium’s internal press box announcer for 48 seasons, providing statistical play-by-play to reporters and tactfully reminding any fans in the booth that there was no cheering allowed.
For all those years of service — with hockey, Bengal Bouts, Bookstore Basketball and the especially complicated names of the World Fencing Championships sprinkled in — Lloyd earned no money until 2013, his final year in the football press box.
He supported his wife, Linda, and their five children running the insurance business his grandfather had started, but he sounded to-the-microphone-born. Lloyd’s rich tenor could convey a news anchor’s just-the-facts authority or stir a crowd like an entertainer.
In the football press box: simple, declarative — with an additional syllable on the word “nine,” as in, “ny-un yards and a rushing first down.” At the basketball scorer’s table: no less prepared and diligent, but with the volume turned up to contribute to a home-court advantage.
Basketball player introductions were a specialty, along with signature nicknames and exclamations to amplify big plays. Catlett became “El Sid.” A long shot from Austin Carr ’71, who made many of them, was a “Carr-oooooom!”
Free throws evolved into a call and response. “Shooting one aaand …” Lloyd would say.
And the crowd in the old Athletic and Convocation Center would chant in unison, “the bonus!”
For 60 years Brother Frank Gorch, CSC, was a jack-of-all-trades around Notre Dame. If a job needed to be done, he answered the call.
Francis John Gorch, who died November 14, 2015, at age 93, came to Notre Dame in 1941 from Manistee, Michigan, as a seminarian and made his final vows a decade later. He soon became caretaker of the Holy Cross cemetery, did shopping and groundskeeping for the community and throughout the 1950s was an assistant manager of the Notre Dame bookstore. Over the years he worked in the treasurer’s office, was manager of Washington Hall and was prefect of Badin, Zahm and Breen-Phillips residence halls until 1966, when he moved into the campus fire station.
He was the last in a long line of Holy Cross brothers to serve as firefighters with the Notre Dame Fire Department, living at the firehouse for more than three decades.
Most students would remember the friendly, accommodating brother as the manager of LaFortune Student Center from 1966 to 1999; the facility’s games room bears his name. In 2010, he was given the Dr. William P. Sexton Award for “his excellent representation of the spirit of Notre Dame” and because “his loyalty, enthusiasm and service to the University epitomize what it means to be part of the Notre Dame family.”