A legend in his own time

He retired years ago from the radio business, but come football Saturdays, it's as though he never left.

"He's the Hotel California of radio," said Tom Stipe, broadcast engineer for the Crimson Tide Sports Network.

"He never leaves. You can't shake him."

And indeed, WWII veteran, radio broadcaster and sports fan Bert Bank has missed just three Alabama football games in the 48 years since he started going to them - and that's counting away games.

"Bert comes to every football game, he sits with us for home basketball games, he's in our fourth seat courtside," said sportscaster Eli Gold.

"He's just a wonderful man, and I would hope I'm as spry as he is when I'm 88."

It's an interesting characterization of a man who graduated with a law degree from the University of Alabama and went to fight a war he wasn't supposed to have survived, let alone stuck around long enough to become a legend.

"He's everyone's hero," said sportscaster and former Alabama football player Kenny Stabler.

"If you're a radio guy, you know it all starts with him."

Back from the dead

In the normal chronology of events, people become ghosts after they die.

Capt. Bertram Bank started out as one: a ghost soldier, one of 513 American and British men imprisoned by the Japanese on the Philippine island of Cabanatuan. Bank remained a POW for three years until he was rescued by 121 soldiers from the U.S. Army 6th Ranger Battalion in January 1945.

Three years in captivity after the surrender of the islands of Corregidor and Bataan to the Japanese, and the brutal Bataan Death March, which killed hundreds of POWs, left Bank blind and weighing just 102 pounds when he came home.

Bank recalled the brutality of the march and his internment in "Ghost Soldiers," a book that told the story of the prisoners and their Ranger rescuers. The book, by historian Hampton Sides, was released last year by Doubleday and excerpted in Esquire magazine.

In the book, Bank describes seeing men felled by disease and weariness or Japanese captors who picked off weaker prisoners who couldn't put up a fight. He recalled passing a Filipino woman during the march who offered the American prisoners a bit of food. The woman was pregnant, and after the Japanese soldiers leading the march decapitated the prisoner who accepted the food, they tore the woman's stomach out.

"We begged the Filipinos not to help us, because we knew they'd be punished for it," Bank said.

Today, the lasting effects of his wartime experiences are down to a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, an inability to drive long distances because of his eyesight, some lingering dreams about the POW camp, and an unabashed patriotism that long pre-dated Sept. 11.

"I remember once, about 12 years ago, it was before a game, and I was talking during the national anthem," said CTSN general manager Butch Henry. "He turned around and whacked me on the arm and told me to hush up.

"You don't talk through the national anthem."

As a legislator, Bank even sponsored state legislation that called for public schools in the state to teach a "philosophy of patriotism."

"I think if you're more patriotic, you're more likely to survive a war," he said. "I've never seen patriotism like it is today, after Sept. 11. Usually I get one or two requests to talk to people around Veterans' Day. This year I had six to eight."

Bank himself wrote about his experiences in 1946 while still recuperating from his injuries in a book titled "Back from the Living Dead." In it, he recounts his 33 months as a POW, and his rescue.

He tells his story to anyone who wants to listen: Rotary Club meetings, school groups, visitors at Alabama games.

"As long as I leave someone loving America a little more, I love it," he said. "I'll do it.

"I think if those men who died in the prison camp could say one thing, they'd want us to appreciate our freedom. They'd say, ëWe secured it for you with our lives.'"

Radio days

Bank returned to Tuscaloosa in 1946, and, along with partners Lamar Branscomb and Jeff Coleman, and engineer Tom Todd, established what would become Tuscaloosa's most popular radio station: WTBC. Bank managed the station, which owned the rights to broadcast Crimson Tide football games, a team then being led by his great friend Paul "Bear" Bryant. He eventually bought the station from his partners.

In those days, WTBC was only the second local station in Tuscaloosa, the first 100,000-watt FM station and the station to listen to.

"It was a bunch of college students hired to run his radio station, and it was just the hottest thing around because of him," said WTBC's current owner Johnny Sisty, who worked at the station in college.

Bank loved the radio business.

"We had pop music and sports. Sports was big with us," Bank said. "We carried Tuscaloosa High School games on Friday nights, Alabama football on Saturdays and LSU games on Saturday night."

He spent time with some of football's greats: Red Grange, Joe Namath, Don Hutson.

"I liked the interviewing. We liked anyone who'd come in for an interview," he said, reminiscently. "I had opportunities to accept other jobs, but I never thought of leaving radio."

Bank also carved out a name for himself in politics from 1966 to 1978, serving two terms in the state House of Representatives and a term in the Alabama State Senate. He sponsored, most notably, health care legislation and served as floor leader under governors George Wallace, Lurleen Wallace and Albert Brewer.

Alabama fan

There are three things by which people define Bert Bank: the broadcast industry, his wartime experience and Alabama sports.

These days, it's mostly about Alabama sports. And his loyalty runs deep, even for a graduate.

"I went to Alabama," he said. "My family was here. When I was a POW, I would think all the time how I couldn't wait to come back to Tuscaloosa."

On game days, he's in the radio booth with the sportscasters, off to the side but still a presence.

"I'm tickled that he still comes around, because it wouldn't be the same if he weren't there," said Gold, who sometimes calls Bank "the old man" while they're in the radio booth together, much to Bank's delight.

Gold credits Bank with smoothing his own transition from New York to Alabama.

"As a New Yorker moving to the South, to a school steeped in Southern tradition, following a man who had done sports for 30 years, it could have been a minefield," Gold said. "But Bert was very kind to me. He did a lot, probably a lot that I don't even know about, to make the path as easy as possible."

Bank retired from the station in 1985, but didn't retire his love of broadcasting. He still has an office at WTBC as "producer emeritus," although he's not officially employed there.

One of his two sons works with the Chicago Cubs management team, and Bank himself is still active in Alabama sports, both as a fan and as a commentator ó albeit behind the scenes.

"He'll often offer little critiques of the broadcast privately," Gold said. "He's involved, he knows what a good show should sound like."

And he's not done with romance, either. In September 1996, Bank married Emma Minkowitz Friedman, a former Miss Georgia whom he had known before. In a bit of accidental symmetry, he first met her in 1941 when he was in Army training in Georgia. After the death of his first wife, Gertrude, in 1995, he was re-introduced to Friedman -- 53 years later.

"My friends in Savannah invited me to play golf with them ó they knew I was mourning my wife, and they wanted to cheer me up," Bank said. "And they asked if I remembered that girl I knew back in the war who was Miss Georgia ... They said I should ask her to dinner, and I said, ëWell, how does she look?' "

Apparently she looked good enough. The two married five years ago.

Emma Bank recalls dating Bank briefly before he was sent overseas, but as the 1939 Miss Georgia, she had a lot of dates, she said.

"We went out every night for two, three weeks, but it was no love affair ó then," she said. During the war, she heard through friends that Bank was first listed as missing in action, then a POW, but by July 1942, she was married herself and had started a family. The two met again in the 1980s, with their respective spouses, and Emma Bank recalls thinking, "He looks good."

She describes Bank during their recent courtship as "a sweet guy."

"Flowers, phone calls, he flew down to see me every week," she said. "He was like a 16-year-old. I fell in love with him then, and we courted about a month. We were both so old, we thought we shouldn't wait."

Emma, now 83, moved to Tuscaloosa after they married, and duly became an Alabama fan, although during the Alabama vs. Georgia game several weeks ago, she admits she was rooting for Georgia.

"I was kinda quiet about it," she said.

She concedes the stage to her husband, saying he's the one who gets recognized wherever they go.

""I like that he's a celebrity," she said. "He gets recognized in the Birmingham airport; we can hardly ever take a trip without someone knowing who he is."

"I tease her sometimes and say she doesn't look like when I first knew her, and she says I don't look as good to her either," Bank said.

Still a pioneer

Bank's influence on radio is still being felt. A sizeable number of broadcasters credit Bank with giving them their first jobs, including ABC News White House correspondent John Cochran, who, when Bank was inducted into the Alabama Communication Hall of Fame in 2000, called him "a man whose blood runs red, white and blue."

"When I was in school at UA, WTBC was known as the Bert Bank School of Broadcasting," said Sisty. "He was that inspirational."

"He put college football on the radio," said Gold. "Bear Bryant told him to put the games on the radio, and Bert said, ëWell, Paul' ó he always called him Paul ó ëWe'll try.'

"That was the rudimentary beginning, and other schools followed his lead.

"Bert's truly a pioneer in this business. He's just a neat guy."

Reach Katherine Lee at katherine.lee@tuscaloosanews.com or 345-0505, Ext. 285