Bud Shippee, the radio voice of the Seymour Owls for 44 years, has been inducted into the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Hall of Fame.

He was inducted during a banquet in Greenwood on April 16.

“I want to thank the association for this truly incredible honor,” Shippee said. “I’ve always thought that if you’ve received an honor, especially like this from your peers, that is just about as good as it gets, and I really do appreciate it.”

Shippee was a 1970 graduate of Seymour High School and a 1975 graduate of Indiana State University.

He began broadcasting Seymour sports with WZZB in 1976 and broadcast more than 2,400 high school football, basketball and football games.

“I’ve also thought that when you receive an honor of this magnitude, it really means that you have gotten a great deal of support and help from a lot of people, and that certainly has been the case with me, and that all starts with my family,” he said. “My wife, Debbie, has been my biggest supporter, and it has been a true blessing to have her by my side through this journey.”

He also expressed his gratitude to his son, Tyler, his daughter, Jamie, and their families and his four grandchildren for their support and his father and mother.

Shippee began his career working with his father, Bob, who began broadcasting games in the old Shields Gymnasium. Bob and Bud broadcasted Seymour games for a total of 70 years between them.

Bud broadcasted multiple Hall of Famers and Indiana All-Stars during his career.

Bud said his dad “was my boss, he was my sports broadcast partner for 14 years, he was my best friend. I certainly would not be here today receiving an award like this without his guidance.”

He said 44 years at the same radio station is quite rewarding.

“You meet a lot of people, and I am blessed to have so many great people to work with,” he said.

Shippee said it was nice to work with people at Seymour High School like Lloyd “Barney” Scott, Donna Sullivan, Joe Goodman, Steve Brett, Teri Moren, Gary Merrill and current athletic director and head boys basketball coach Kirk Manns.

Shippee expressed his gratitude to the people in broadcasting who helped him so many times.

“There are two individuals I would like to mention specifically that had a real impact on my life and career. Both are in this hall of fame,” he said. “The first is the late Charlie Jenkins. We all remember Charlie with more than 50 years of broadcasting high school sports in his hometown area of Clark and Floyd counties.”

Shippee said Jenkins broadcasted Seymour sports for one year before he moved to back to his hometown area.

“During that one year, he befriended a 9-year old that hung around the radio station with his dad. Even at that young age, Charlie was encouraging me to get into broadcasting,” Shippee said. “I always looked at Charlie as the consummate professional. To me, he was the most organized person I was ever around when it came to broadcasting high school sports. I learned so much from him.”

“The other person is Sam Simmermaker (from Columbus). I grew up listening to the radio all the time, and one of the things I liked most was listening to high school sports, and at that time, Sam was broadcasting the great Columbus teams in the early to mid 60s,” Shippee said. “He was so much fun to listen to, but it was that unique style of Sam that made it even more fun because the games weren’t really that close. They were so good they rarely had close games, so I knew Sam as a voice for years.”

Shippee said he didn’t get to meet Sam until Shippee’s first game of his broadcast career, a Seymour-Columbus East football game in 1976.

“We walked into the press box and Sam greeted us and asked us if there was anything we needed,” he said. “I thought meeting him for the first time was great.”

Simmermaker asked him for a pregame interview to talk about the Owls. Shippee said on the way home, he told his dad he thinks that interview helped calm him down for the game.

Others inducted into the hall of fame were Mark Ambrogi, formerly of the Indianapolis Star; Rick Bozich, formerly of the Louisville Courier-Journal; the late Richard Lankford, formerly of WRAY Princeton; Jim Peters, formerly with the Northwest Indiana Times and LaPorte Herald-Dispatch; and Harold Welter, formerly from WKVI in Knox.