Dave is retiring at the end of this year after 48 years of broadcasting Cardinal sports on KXRA.  Now that’s true love – driving home from Bemidji after a hockey game in mid-January, getting home after midnight, and getting up early in the morning to file your report with the radio station.  Uffda!  There’s only one thing that could keep you going through all of that – plenty of Cokes!

On Wednesday, the community feted Dave on all those long years of service with a tribute at the high school.  And when you fete someone, you have to serve cake!

And you have to have honoree stuff . . .

Paul Dyke is the caricaturist.  Paul is the son of Dick Dyke, past general manager for the Park Region Echo.  Dick hired Dave to be the sports columnist for the newspaper some time back in the last century.  Paul is also a close personal friend of all members of the Obert family because . . . well, we all grew up together in Victoria Heights.

Then Dave and Evie “hosted” a receiving line that lasted past the agenda schedule of events (or is that redundant?) . . .

And then the speakers . . .

[Dave Hartmann, Cardinal athletic director]

[Bob Cunniff, Dave’s broadcast partner]

[Brett Paradis, owner of KXRA]

[Joe Korkowski, emcee and producer of the video at the end of this post]

[The honoree . . . for goodness sake’s, the guy is known all over the state and is the envy of many communities.  Name any other radio station that broadcasts high school volleyball games.  Go ahead, I dare you!  😉  ]

So as we say good-bye, with Mark Ripley (“The Competition”) and Dave’s cokes . . .

I have to report that Dave was always a useful resource in the production of this blog.  Many a time I would go to a game . . . and then the next morning listen to Dave’s broadcast archived on the Voice of Alexandria to make sure I got things right.  Why else do you think I’d be up before 4:00 am most days?

The Voice of Alexandria’s terrific video (thanks, Joe):

And we have to end with a bone of contention . . .

Dave claims he had nothing to do with this, but we have a number of witnesses to the contrary.  Back in the days before electricity and social media, we had no way of knowing the results of high school games the morning after unless we’d been at the game – I mean the Echo is only published twice a week.  We were mall walkers back then – the prelude to the Fat Boys Walking Club at the Y – and Dave and Evie would do the same after Dave’s morning radio report.  So we’d always descend on him en masse to find out the scores.  At the time, he knew we were totally smitten with the girls’ hockey team, so he said, “I suppose you want to know how your little darlings did last night?”  Well, the name stuck . . . and the team presented us with the above framed photo that year.  The next year the team won state, as we predicted at the start of the season.

Thanks again, Dave, you can now be a proud member of the Super Fans!