SALLY ANN SHURMUR Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 12:00 am
Lynn Birleffi remembers spending Thanksgivings in Denver.
"We played Denver University in football down there every year at Thanksgiving, and it was so cold," she said recently.
Although it was earlier rather than later, those games could have taken place anytime between 1947 and 1986, when her father, the beloved, iconic Larry Birleffi never missed a University of Wyoming football or basketball game.
"He did it all, he did both writing and broadcasting, and for a long time, he was the only one who traveled," recalled Cheyenne native Kevin McKinney, who knew Birleffi since childhood.
McKinney, now the senior associate athletic director for external operations at UW, has had a career that in many ways parallels that of Birlieffi.
Both were raised in Wyoming, both graduated from the University of Wyoming, and both have spent their careers promoting Wyoming athletics. McKinney currently serves as the color commentator for both football and basketball radio broadcasts.
First, however, as a young boy in Cheyenne, McKinney was a Cowboys fan.
"To me, Larry was Wyoming's connection to me and my generation for sure growing up," he said. "He was the single connection to Wyoming sports. He was connected to the coaches and athletes in a way that made what he wrote and said very personal."
Birleffi was born in Hartville in 1918 and served during World War II as a major in the U.S. Army 92nd Infantry Division. Those four years in Italy were the only ones he would spend outside his beloved Wyoming.
He graduated from UW in 1942 with a degree in journalism and spent his entire professional life in his chosen field.
Birleffi's role in Wyoming media changed as the industry grew - from writing for the Laramie Daily Boomerang and Wyoming Tribune in Cheyenne to radio and then television.
He created the popular radio talk show "Cheyenne Today" and was station manager and eventual part-owner of KFBC Radio in Cheyenne.
The press area at War Memorial Stadium in Laramie bears his name. He was inducted into the UW Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in 1996, the Wyoming Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2003 and was named an Outstanding Alumnus of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2001.
"He was our window at a time when the school was really blossoming athletically," McKinney said. "(Bowden) Wyatt, Ev Shelton, all those guys, during the formative years, he reported it. He was our eyes and ears, glued to the radio back home."
McKinney, whose primary work was in sports information at UW, characterized Birleffi's coverage in this way:
"He was decently fair with respect to his profession, but he was also a supporter. He was not going to be negative, he was going to help the program, and he made that decision early on in his career, and he stuck by it wholeheartedly."
While Wyoming's athletic teams were not always successful during Birlieffi's nearly five decades writing and broadcasting, McKinney said Birleffi's support made sense.
"People don't want to hear a bunch of negative," he said. "They want to hear about their teams from a Cowboy."
Birleffi married Lois Sturtevant in 1942 and they were married more than 60 years, until her death in 2004.
They had three daughters - Lynn of Cheyenne, Bobbie of New York City and Laurie of Chevy Chase, Md. Lynn and Laurie are both UW graduates; Bobbie graduated from Stanford.
Although Birleffi's work often took him away from home, Lynn also remembers that "he included us in a lot of stuff."
On one of his sports shows on KFBC in Cheyenne, Birleffi had a contest where listeners could predict the outcome of games.
"We were the contest correctors," Lynn said of she and her sisters' roles. "That's how I learned about colleges and mascots and so on."
And the girls were always featured on his Christmas show.
"I can recite 'Twas the Night Before Christmas to this day," Lynn laughed.
Devoted husband, father and grandfather, unabashed booster of Wyoming athletics, Larry Birleffi died Sept. 27, 2008, at the age of 90.
Community News editor Sally Ann Shurmur can be reached at (307) 266-0520 or sallyann.shurmur@trib.com