University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Growing Up Durham
December 29, 2011 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Dec. 29, 2011
By Adam Lucas
At most Christmas Eve dinner tables, the talk is of presents and reindeer and mistletoe. For one local family, however, the conversation was about Reynolds Coliseum and the Comcast Center and the Smith Center.
That's how life goes when you're a member of the Durham clan. And so it was that when Woody and Jean Durham gathered with their sons, Wes and Taylor, in Atlanta on Dec. 24, they simply had to talk about basketball games. They eventually deduced that after Dec. 29, there would be eight arenas in which Woody, Wes and Taylor had all broadcast games.
The latest to add to that is the Smith Center, where Taylor slid into the play-by-play seat for Elon to call Thursday night's 100-62 Carolina victory. As he did so, it was under the watchful eye of his father, who now can be found in section 212 at Carolina home games.
It put Taylor in the same situation Wes had experienced in 1995, his first year calling Georgia Tech football games. The Jackets were hosting Carolina, and during a timeout, Wes had a startling revelation as he looked to his left, into the visiting broadcast booth. "That," he realized, "is my dad. And we're doing the same game."
Minutes before tipoff, Taylor was asked what it was like to be on a press row that his father called home since the building opened in 1986. "I'm two seats away from the chair my favorite sportscaster of all time occupied for a long time," he said. "It's a lot of fun to be in this building, but that's the first thing I thought of."
Spend a few minutes talking to Taylor and there's not much question you're talking to a Durham. He's got that same inflection, that same rhythm, that we heard through our radios for the past 40 years. Think about it: we had Woody as our Carolina eyes and ears for four decades. Taylor had him as his dad.
That meant, sometimes, that Dad would be in the Canary Islands with the Tar Heel basketball team calling an exhibition tournament over Christmas when Taylor would have preferred he was at home opening presents. That meant, sometimes, that it was hard to be Taylor Durham and not "Woody's son." Everyone has that moment or day or month or year when they want to be anything other than whatever their father was.
But being Woody's son also had its perks. It meant Taylor called Carolina legends like Al Wood, a player his schoolmates only knew from television (or Woody Durham's radio broadcasts), his friend. Taylor once went with his mother, Jean, to meet his father at the airport after a Carolina road trip. "Al," he told Wood, "you played pretty well. But you shot a lot of bricks." Wood laughed and hoisted Taylor onto his shoulders.
Being Woody's son meant a storehouse of broadcasting information living right down the hall. When Taylor spread his charts and game cards out on the press table Thursday night, they looked remarkably similar to those used by his father. Everyone also has that moment or day or month or year when they would feel lucky to be anything that their father is.
What's remarkable about it is how it's all worked out. Woody spent four decades as the voice of the Tar Heels, before passing that chair to Jones Angell, the perfect Carolina blue-blooded successor. Woody went out on his own terms, just as he'd always said he would, and in time to remain a viable part of the Tar Heel sports community through the Rams Club and GAA.
Wes is in Atlanta, where he's a city institution, the voice of Georgia Tech and the Atlanta Falcons and co-host of a rapidly growing radio show with Tony Barnhart. Taylor is at Elon, the job he's wanted ever since he can remember wanting a play-by-play job.
Taylor believes Elon is a program is on the rise, thinks there will be many more nights the rest of this season more fun than Thursday night's rout. Before he could get to that, though, he had to weather Carolina's dunkfest of a first half, when John Henson posted a double-double almost before they turned the lights back on after pregame introductions (which included some unique dance moves from Henson himself).
Somehow, Taylor didn't seem to mind the 53-19 halftime deficit too much. He still had a very important halftime interview to conduct. He'd prepared--preparation comes as naturally to a Durham as self-promotion comes to a Kardashian--a set of questions for a Carolina institution, someone he admired greatly and who he knew would provide a unique brand of insight to the listeners on the Phoenix network.
Woody Durham, of course.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of six books on Carolina basketball, including the official chronicle of the first 100 years of Tar Heel hoops, A Century of Excellence, which is available now. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter and Facebook.
