Tampa Bay Media icon Jack Harris has plenty of memories to share.

Jack Harris never attended a soccer game before the Rowdies arrived on the Tampa Bay sporting landscape. He began calling their games in 1976, the North American Soccer League team’s second season. He learned about the sport very quickly. He had to because he unexpectedly, and abruptly, inherited the assignment.

“I had never seen a soccer game or had anything to do with the sport,” he said. “Jim Gallogly, who was doing play-by-play of the Rowdies, invited me to come to a game and sit up in the press box (at Tampa Stadium). At halftime, he asked what I thought about the game. I told him that it was fun and interesting. He said, ‘Okay, you’re doing the second half.’ Just like that, I became the voice of the Rowdies. The first soccer game I ever saw I ended up broadcasting.”

Harris called the team’s games for roughly a decade and became friends of many of the players, including Winston DuBose and Rodney Marsh.

“That was a fun team to travel with and they were party guys, for sure,” he said.

That was among a treasure trove of memories Harris shared at a South Tampa restaurant on an early June afternoon.

The 81-year-old Harris, a Tampa Bay radio personality for more than a half century, has been pretty much doing whatever the heck he wants since his final day at NewsRadio WFLA earlier this year. That includes traveling.

He and Joy, his wife of 36 years and who has had quite a career herself authoring several cookbooks, spent several days in May visiting North Dakota. Having checked off Little Rock, Ark. three years ago, Bismarck was the only state capital Harris had yet to visit.

Harris went through Bismarck on a train during a family trip in the late 1940s when his father was in the military and stationed outside Tokyo, where the family lived when Jack was in the first and second grade. They were heading to Seattle where they would board a ship to return to Japan.

“I sort of figured I had been to Bismarck, but I didn’t stay there, I didn’t visit and I was on the train the whole time,” said Harris. “Joy wanted to go to North Dakota because that was a state she had never visited, so we arranged for a trip there. That was my last capital to spend a night in.”

Born William H. Harris, Jr., the West Virginia native and graduate of West Virginia University served in the U.S. Army with a tour in Viet Nam. He was also known as “Bucky.” The nickname was bestowed upon him by an uncle, and after the Hall of Fame baseball manager who skippered, among other teams, the Washington Senators.

“I actually met Bucky Harris one year when I was living in Timberville, Virginia,” he recalled. “I made the trip to D.C. a few times, and one time I brought a book with his picture in it. I told him that I was also Bucky Harris and was named after him. I asked him to sign the book. Well, he signed his real name, not Bucky.”

When Harris, who still has the book signed by Stanley Raymond Harris, arrived in Tampa to work for WFLA, his name was changed to “Jack.” It wasn’t long before he was making a name for himself on the airwaves, including sports. With the Tampa Bay region lacking a team in either of the four major professional leagues, he began doing color commentary for University of South Florida men’s basketball games beginning with the program’s inaugural season of 1971-72.

“They were called the Golden Brahmans,” said Harris, who took over play-by-play duties the following season and continued in that capacity for several years. “Eventually, we got them to drop ‘Golden’ and just be the Brahmans. Of course, they are now known as the Bulls.”

An NFL franchise began play in Tampa in 1976. Before it took the field, Harris organized a name-the-team contest during his morning show. Three local newspaper writers and editors served as judges and were asked to compile top-10 lists from the many names submitted by listeners.

“‘Buccaneers’ was first on (Tampa Tribune sports editor and columnist) Tom McEwen’s list and was last on the list of one of the other judges,” said Harris. “It was the only name that got two votes. So, the team became the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.”

Harris did color, had a locker room show and a coach’s show on WTOG-TV in those early years, his first of three stints covering the Bucs. John McKay’s team lost its first 26 games before defeating the Saints, 33-14, in New Orleans on December 11, 1977.

“When we came home, people were going crazy,” said Harris. “The airport was packed with people wanting to see the team, but the team did not go through the airport. A bus met the team (on the tarmac) and went back to (the team’s facility at) One Buc Place. People were there all night and celebrating like crazy. It was unbelievable.”

Harris and team owner Hugh Culverhouse almost missed the fun in Tampa because they were having a lot of fun in New Orleans.

“We were doing a little partying in the locker room after they finally won,” said Harris. “The team got on the bus to go to the airport and started pulling away from the Superdome without Culverhouse and myself. I was chasing the bus and hollering for it to stop. We made it. We were almost stuck there after the first win.”

A team that had no problem winning from the start was the Tampa Bay Bandits. Co-owned by Burt Reynolds and coached by Steve Spurrier, the United States Football League franchise lasted only three seasons (1983-85), like the league itself. The Bandits, though, were an entertaining product that made two playoff appearances.

Harris did color each season with Gene Deckerhoff, who has handled Bucs radio play-by-play duties since 1989 and called Florida State football and men’s basketball for more than 40 years.

“The Bandits were more popular than the Bucs back then,” said Harris. “I loved working with the Bandits. They outdrew the Bucs in a big way. People loved them and they had great players.”

Harris said that while Reynolds attended games in Tampa, the Hollywood icon was not necessarily a regular. When Reynolds was present at Tampa Stadium, it meant a handful of celebrities could be seen near the press box.

“I remember when he had invited a bunch of Hollywood types to a home game,” said Harris, whose only interview of Reynolds was in Arizona before a game between the Bandits and the Wranglers. “There was Esther Williams, Ernest Borgnine, Dom DeLuise and several other Hollywood stars. It really was a great time and it’s a shame it lasted only three years.”

Harris remembers another USFL owner very well. Donald Trump was a 30-something owner of the New Jersey Generals after the future president purchased the team from an Oklahoma oil magnate following the 1983 season.

“I interviewed him two times when he was with the Generals,” remembered Harris. “I also ran into him at a Super Bowl in Miami and interviewed him in the studio when he running (for president in early 2016).”

Trump and his fellow owners had a difference of opinion about the direction of the league, which led to its demise.

“That upset me to no end,” said Harris, a member of the Sports Club of Tampa Bay’s Hall of Fame. “People loved the Bandits. They had a number of great players.”

Before his run with Tampa Bay’s professional sports teams, and following the success of one of his radio bits, The Floridians (A Yankee’s Opinion) in 1973 that satirized Canadian broadcaster Gordon Sinclair’s commentary The Americans (A Canadian’s Opinion), Harris left for WRC radio in D.C. One of the young ladies who handled traffic reports at the station while attending nearby Mount Vernon College (which later became part of Georgia Washington University) was President Gerald Ford’s daughter, Susan. That connection resulted in Harris working on the president’s WIN campaign – Whip Inflation Now – in 1974.

“(Ford) listened every morning to hear his daughter,” said Harris. “When he had the WIN campaign, there were 25 or 30 people on the committee and I was the only media person. I got to know him then.”

Harris emceed Ford’s campaign rally in Tampa in 1976 as well as a ribbon-cutting event that included the then-former president helping launch a transit service linking downtown Tampa and the city’s Harbour Island in 1985.

“He was a really nice guy and I enjoyed being with him,” said Harris. “He knew about me moving back to Tampa, and when he was running again, he wanted me to emcee his campaign rally.”

A couple of days after the rally, Harris received a call inquiring as to whether he would be interested in emceeing a campaign rally in Tampa for Jimmy Carter.

“I told them that they did not want me there because I just emceed a rally for President Ford,” he said. “They said, ‘Well, that’s okay because we want you.’ So, a week later I emceed a Carter rally. I didn’t get a chance to meet Carter. It was funny being the emcee for Ford and Carter.”

It was 1976 when Bobby Bowden took over on the sideline at Florida State. It was a job Bowden accepted despite Harris’ attempt to dissuade the coach from moving to Tallahassee. Harris knew Bowden from when the latter was the offensive coordinator at West Virginia in the late 1960s before taking over as head coach in 1970.

Harris was at a party at a Tampa hotel where Bowden was being pampered by FSU supporters wanting him to take over the Seminoles. In six years at the helm at West Virginia, he led the program to five winning seasons and a pair of bowl appearances at a time when bowl invitations carried much prestige. Harris did not think it would be wise for Bowden to leave Morgantown to take over an FSU team that went 4-29 the previous three seasons.

“FSU was pretty pathetic then,” said Harris. “Plus, everything was Gators, Gators and Gators. I remember telling him, ‘Bobby, you are going to make a big mistake. At West Virginia, everybody loves you, the whole state is yours and if you go to Florida State you will be second fiddle. There are no FSU fans in the state except in Tallahassee.’ Well, of course, he went to FSU and did pretty well, didn’t he?”

He sure did, and Harris has done pretty well, too. He was recognized during a Tampa Bay Lightning playoff game in April for his support of Tampa-based Metropolitan Ministries and his 50-plus years of contributions to the community. The non-profit assists the less fortunate in the Tampa Bay region with food, shelter, financial assistance and other means of support.

“I have been a big fan of Metropolitan Ministries,” said Harris, who has spent much of his time over the decades assisting such non-profits, a list that also includes Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army. “I thought it was a great thing what they did in helping the poor, ultimately getting living quarters for them, feeding them and things like that. I have always been impressed by the work that they do. It’s a great organization.”

Harris feels it would be great thing if Tampa established a walk of fame, whether it is somewhere along the downtown riverwalk or another location. He will be going before city council June 22 to make his pitch.

“They have to put together a committee to decide who goes on it, where it will be located and how it is going to be financed,” he said. “I think Tampa needs to have something like that.”

A street named after his longtime radio partner, the late Ted Webb, who also spent more than 50 years on the airwaves in the bay area, is something Harris would like to see as well.

“I want to have a street named for Ted in West Tampa, where he was born and raised,” he said. “People loved him. It was so great working with him.”

Building momentum for a walk of fame, traveling with Joy and catching up with friends over lunch keep Harris plenty busy. Perhaps his schedule will once again include being on air in Tampa Bay.

“It’s been a great career,” he said. “I have had a lot of fun and I hope it ain’t over.”