In mid-October, Walter Darlington Huddleston died at the age of 92. Known as Dee to his friends and political foes, I first got to know him through my family while growing up in Elizabethtown in the mid-1950s.

Dee and I developed a friendship that began when he hired me one summer to call in Little League baseball scores live on the air to radio station WIEL, which he had owned since 1952. I was a sophomore in high school and – outside of my uncle’s Pontiac dealership where I worked summers washing cars – it was my first non-family paycheck.

In 2004, I approached Dee about a book I was thinking about writing about the history of sportscasting in Kentucky. He began to talk, and I began to take notes. But then he said, “Let me put some things down on paper and get it to you.”

Did he ever!

In March 2005, I received an envelope with six single-spaced typewritten pages, plus pictures. I called and thanked him, and before we hung up, he said he sent me stories that had not been told to many.

Here goes:

“Basketball was a very important part of my life while in high school,” he wrote. “It was the only sport offered at the two schools I attended.”

Dee broke into the starting lineup as a sophomore at Monticello High School before moving to Jeffersontown in 1942, where he played well enough to make several conference all-star teams.

UK coach Adolph Rupp inquired about Dee.

“I was proud of what I had accomplished, but I knew I was not material for UK or any other major college. A month later, I was drafted into the Army,” he said.

When Dee enrolled at UK in the fall of 1946, he recalled Rupp’s earlier interest in him and decided to pay him a visit. Thinking it would be impossible to see the famous coach, he went anyway. However, when the receptionist advised Rupp that the freshman was there to see him, Dee was, to his surprise, immediately ushered into his office.

“He could not have been more gracious,” he said. “He told me he had scheduled tryouts the next Monday and invited me to come out.”

Dee and about 100 others showed up. He lasted three days, but in the end only the original squad that had already won championships was left.

Dee began his broadcasting career as a student at UK doing basketball and football.

“A big bonus was the privilege of attending practice sessions of coaches Rupp and Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant,” he continued.

He also cut his teeth on some area high school games, filling in for Claude Sullivan. Following graduation in 1949, he joined radio station WKCT in Bowling Green, where he did the news, as well as broadcasting Western Kentucky University football and basketball.

“The station operated daytime only the first year, so I broadcast only daytime football games,” he said. “The next year the station went full time so I did football and basketball for two seasons.

“It was a great experience traveling with coaches Ed Diddle and Ted Hornback. Western played a great schedule with games in Madison Square Garden, Philadelphia, Toledo, Miami and Tampa.”

In 1952, after moving to WIEL in Elizabethtown, he called high school games for a couple of years. Not long after, he bought the station, as well as becoming part owner in a couple of others in Kentucky.

In the late 1950s, Dee was hired to do University of Louisville basketball over a statewide Ashland Oil Network working with Cardinal coach Peck Hickman.

“I did several games on a freelance basis for WHAS in Louisville,” he said. “It was UK, UofL, Western and the state high school tournament. I broadcast the game in 1956 when King Kelly Coleman scored a record 68 points in the consolidation game against Bell County.”

During the Blanton Collier era, Kentucky Central Insurance sponsored a statewide network for UK football.

“I was picked to do the play-by-play for one season,” Dee wrote. “My color man was Jim Host, who later founded Host Communications.”

Soon after, WHAS contacted Dee about becoming the station’s sports director. By now his plate was full so he declined. A friend of Dee’s, Cawood Ledford was hired.

“Broadcasting Western games was always a challenge … heated rivalries, small gyms and large crowds,” Dee remembered. “There was a game at Western where Eastern coach Paul McBrayer, right before tipoff, went out on the floor and measured the height of the goal, suggesting that Western was altering the basket to handicap his shooters.”

Like many in the media back then, coaches provided lots of stories, especially Rupp and Diddle.

“Coach Diddle was such a pleasure to be around,” he continued. “For a long time he called me Dee Gibson, one of his past greats. His misuse of the English language was legendary. I was in his office one day and he was dictating a letter to another coach. He sounded like a college English professor. It made me wonder if his malapropisms weren’t a product of his natural showmanship.”

But Dee said he had one more Diddle story. It was one he said had never been told.

“I took my 2-year-old son, Stephen, to a Western baseball game. Coach Diddle also coached baseball,” Dee said. “In about the third inning a batter fouled a ball into an adjoining field that was grown up in weeds. When the ball was not immediately found, Coach Diddle stopped the game and had players from both teams looking for the ball. After about 10 minutes the ball was found and handed to the coach. He walked back to the stands where my son and I were sitting and handed the ball to Stephen. Never before have so many looked so long for a foul ball that would not be in play again.”

While there have been sportscasters who, by their own admission, have a face made for radio, this was not the case with Dee. With good looks to go with his smooth commanding voice, it is ironic that he was only involved in one television broadcast.

“When the then-new Diddle Arena opened I was called back to share the TV broadcast with Ken Givens of WLBJ. Western hosted Vanderbilt and it was the only TV game I ever did,” he said.

Dee was a U.S. senator from 1973 to 1985 after serving in the state Senate. When John Sherman Cooper retired from the U.S. Senate, former Republican Gov. Louie Nunn and Democrat Huddleston faced off. In a state Republican Richard Nixon carried by more than 300,000 votes, Huddleston won by 34,000.

A two-term U.S. senator, Dee was a heavy favorite to defeat Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Louisville, in 1984. Much of the credit for McConnell’s upset win was given to a series of last-minute TV ads depicting bloodhounds hunting for Dee, attacking his voting record in the Senate.

It worked. Of the 1.2 million votes cast, McConnell won by a razor-thin 3,437 votes.

For years, my path would cross with Dee’s, and one time in particular it was in Washington while he was still in the Senate.

I was broadcasting WKU basketball games with Wes Strader, and the Hilltoppers were playing Georgetown University led by Patrick Ewing at the Capital Centre. We invited Dee to join us at our courtside table. With a couple of minutes remaining in the first half, Wes asked the senator if he’d like to do a little play-by-play for old times.

“It’s been a long, long time since I’ve done this,” I recall Dee saying as he slipped on the headset.

When the first half ended, even though we were sitting on an ice hockey rink covered by a basketball court, Dee’s face was dripping with perspiration.

“This was tough,” he said with a laugh. “It’s been so long since I’ve called a game. I’m just going to watch the second half.”

A few years ago, I thought about doing a book on the Gold Vault at Fort Knox. I knew that Dee in 1974 led a successful effort to open up the Gold Vault to prove there was indeed gold inside.

In 2014, Dee was living in an assisted living condo overlooking Freeman Lake in Elizabethtown when I visited him. His memory was slipping a bit, but his bright eyes and easy smile were still there.

“Dee,” I said, “I want to ask you how you think a book about the Gold Vault would do?”

“I think it would be a good one … a damn good one,” he said without hesitation.

Dee went on to tell me in a slow delivery how people were saying nothing was there.

“My idea was to show ‘em,” he said with a laugh. “So we showed ’em.”

He sure did. Newspapers, TV, and even radio from all over the country showed up as armed guards looked on. And there was plenty of gold. I don’t know if it’s still there, but it was when Dee showed the world.

I visited Dee on three occasions that year. He always seemed glad to see me. I would ask questions about ballgames, the Gold Vault and politics.

“Here, let me show you a picture I have of me at the Gold Vault,” he said as he handed me a frame with two photos of that historic day.

We talked a little longer.

“My memory just escapes me right now,” blinking his eyes as if he hoped it would return. “I’m amazed at what I’m seeing on the news and how everyone is presenting their sides of the story.”

That was the last time I saw Dee.

Get up, get out and get going!

– Gary West’s column runs monthly in the Daily News. He can be reached by emailing west1488@twc.com.