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THE
DAILY OKLAHOMAN
Page 21
Tue, 23 Jun 1998
His Courage Isn't All Talk
Radio Personality Lutz Has Triumphed
Over Disability by Berry Tramel
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Eight-thirty in the morning,
and Dan Lutz can't get over the hump. Literally.
He can't get over a one-inch hump that leads to the platform
that every weekday lifts him to the Metro Transit bus.
Crawling a flight of stairs when he could be carried,
reaching for a phone that could be handed to him 10 times
quicker, outworking everyone else in his business - what
the 33-year-old Lutz can do, he does do.
Sometimes pride has to make for practicality. All the
pride in the world won't navigate the wheelchair over
the hump. Lutz asks for help, and soon he's rising to
the second stop of his three-bus journey to work. Soon
he's on his way to talk sports with the good folks of
greater Oklahoma City.
Soccer is better than luge.
Malone could be one of Brigham Young's wives.
Jordan could go out there with four statues? He WAS out
there with three stooges.
I don't think you have to say the World Cup of soccer.
What else is there, the World Cup of Soup?
Lutz's afternoon show, The King & His Court, has ended.
Another day of wisecracks and hard-core sports talk. Let
other shows on the Sports Animal, KNTL 104.9-FM, swerve
off into mindless rattle about movies and babes. Lutz
and his co-host, Mark Rodgers, talk sports.
Lutz doesn't claim to be qualified to talk anything else.
Want to know the
injury status of the Cleveland Cavaliers' backup point
guard? How the Red Sox prospects at Pawtucket are doing?
Why the zone blitz won't work against the Chargers? Dan's
your man.
"Good show, Dan," Lutz is told by a station
visitor. "Thanks," answers Lutz. "Sure
you had the right channel?"
Self-deprecation is Lutz's only schtick. Which fits in
nicely with the station's common theme: Bash Dan Lutz.
Personalities like Mike Steely and Jim Traber can build
an entire show around Lutz's eating habits (the Cholesterol
Police work overtime); his favorite teams (Vikings, Cubs,
Knicks); his inability to drive himself home. It's all
act.
"He's the backbone of our station," said Traber.
"I love him to death, and I respect him. Not because
he's in a wheelchair, but because he's damn good at what
he does."
Lutz hosts a show, spends three hours as Traber's late
afternoon sidekick and books almost all the guests for
the Sports Animal's 13 1/2 hours of local programming
per day.
"You appreciate him more over time," said Craig
Humphreys, who gave Lutz his start in the talk-show business.
"You appreciate his knowledge. You appreciate how
hard he works at his job. It's his whole life. "He's
up here all day. When he goes home, he's watching professional
sports until midnight every night. Reads on weekends.
When the other guys are going to the lake or playing golf,
he's reading."
Traber, a former major league baseball player, is about
75 percent bluster on the air and 50 percent off it. But
three years ago, when Humphreys branched off from rival
station WWLS and needed Traber as his marquee host, Traber
had one demand. Lutz has to come, too.
Traber even promised Lutz a ride home from work every
night, since the change would mean a Norman-to-Oklahoma
City commute. "Dan is a man I respect more than anyone
else in this business," said Steely, who also is
sports director for KOKH-TV, Oklahoma City's FOX affiliate.
"Sharp wit, great knowledge. I hold him in high regard.
"He's a guy we can all model ourselves after. If
we all had his work ethic and his heart, the world would
be a better place."
Thirty minutes early, Lutz would arrive at the old high-school
ballpark in Billings, Mont. Calling American Legion baseball
for KBIT wasn't a glamorous job, but it was broadcasting
and it was sports, and Lutz was glad to have it. Thirty
minutes was how long it took him to reach his post.
Crawling up two flights of stairs got him to the bleachers;
crawling up the bleachers got him to the pressbox. Crawling
got him where he needed to go when his wheelchair had
no ramp and his body wasn't strong enough to make the
crutches climb stairs. For the chance to call a game,
it was a small sacrifice.
Lutz had wanted to be a sportscaster since he was 12 years
old and his hopes of being a football coach ended. Since
he figured out that to be a football coach, you needed
to have played football, and kids with cerebral palsy
don't play football.
Doctors believe a lack of oxygen to the brain caused the
C.P. No one really knows, though, why Dan Lutz was afflicted
and Denny Lutz, born that same March day in 1965, was
not. Hard to imagine a twin growing up in virtual isolation,
but Dan Lutz did. Three sisters and one brother were much
older; his mother died when he was 13; his father worked
long hours in the oil field. His twin had other interests.
Lutz would stand outside in his North Dakota yard and
play catch by himself. He had spent a year in Montana
at a school for the handicapped, where he learned to use
the swing-through method to walk with crutches. "The
hardest thing I've ever had to do," he said. How
hard was it? The first thing they teach is how to fall.
He found a friend in sports. By the age of 5, he was a
Knicks fan, watching the Laker-New York NBA Finals of
1970. He listened to Minnesota Twin games. When cable
came to Bowman, N.D., the Cubs became his passion. Today,
only his days have changed. His evenings are spent in
front of his television, watching satellite-generated
games, or on the Internet, where he consumes newspapers
and information from all over the country.
He long ago developed his own niche. "You're known
as the sports guy," he said. "It gives you identity.
When kids in high school were going out partying, I was
home watching baseball games."
His only school vocation was speech. Many cerebral palsy
victims have major articulation problems; Lutz's speech
is only slightly affected. His confidence, much more.
All three years of high school he entered a speech broadcasting
contest. "Nerves got to me all three years, and I
choked," he said.
He spent the summer after graduation in Billings with
a sister and decided to stay. He entered a broadcasting
school and promptly flunked the entrance exam. "Nobody
fails the entrance exam," Lutz said. The test was
reciting tongue-twisters. "Sally sells sea... I can't
even do it now."
So Lutz went to the library, checked out a book and practiced
tongue-twisters. He went back to the school, and the owner
was impressed with the kid's spunk. That led to a job
interview in which Lutz, on crutches, swung the book bag
between his teeth and spilled the employer's coffee.
He got the job anyway, jocking country records from midnight
to 6 a.m.
Toughest part of that job? No bathroom break for six hours,
since songs go about three minutes and Lutz can't get
around that fast. Next toughest? Knowing fellow employees
had to pull six hours of music for him before his shift,
because he couldn't reach the shelves.
For 15 years, Lutz has lived with his sister, Debbie,
and her daughter, Brooke, now 16. They are his family;
the only two people allowed to call him Danny.
When they moved; he moved. First to Gillette, Wyo., where
he was a DJ, inserted commercials for a cable company
and attended a community college. Then to Norman in August
1990, three days after his father's death. A few months
later, he was hired to run the phone board at WWLS. Two
years later, Humphreys joined the station as an early
morning host and realized Lutz was a sports encyclopedia.
"I found this guy's a heckuva lot more knowledgeable
than the guys on the air, and they never let him say a
word," said Humphreys, who began incorporating Lutz
into his show.
"I can remember many cold winter mornings, I go out
there at 5:45, and here's this guy crawling out of his
sister's car. At first, he didn't even have a wheelchair.
"I thought, some day, if there's any justice, this
is going to pay off."
The day that started with a two-hour, three-bus trek to
work - a van from his home to the bus stop, a bus to downtown
Oklahoma City, another van to the station - ends with
a limousine ride. Lutz hasn't driven since he came to
Oklahoma - "I chickened out. One of the things I'm
most unproud of." - and his usual ride home, Traber,
is doing a show on remote. So the KNTL brass has worked
a tradeout with a limo company. Of course, not even a
limo makes his legs work. He crawls in and out just like
it was the old pressbox in Billings.
Most of his callers know Lutz is disabled. Many of his
listeners do not. "I never tried to hide it,"
he said, and when the Casey Martin saga was broiling,
Lutz offered his personal insight. "But I never tried
to talk about it much on the air. I don't want to make
a big deal out of it. It really has no bearing on the
show."
It has a bearing on his fans.
On Nov. 8, 1995, Humphreys' company celebrated its three-month
anniversary with a listener party at a local sports bar.
When Humphreys arrived with Lutz, the place was packed,
with people standing outside. "I came wheeling him
in, and when he got there, the whole place erupted,"
Humphreys said. "Standing ovation. People love Dan."
It would seem that maybe, after all, Dan Lutz is over
the hump.
Reprinted with permission © Copyright, The Oklahoma Publishing
Company
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