(MCT) — The world knew Jim Durham as a dynamite play-by-play announcer and a longtime voice of the National Basketball Association. His work with the Chicago Bulls and later in the NBA at large earned Durham the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s Curt Gowdy Media Award in 2011.

Before all of that, he was sports director at Bloomington’s WJBC Radio in the early 1970s during the Doug Collins era at Illinois State. And while then-WJBC co-workers Don Munson and Steve Vogel realized how skilled Durham was at a courtside microphone, they knew a gem of a man who laughed easily.