Broadcast legend Frank P. Soden dies

Frank P. Soden’s work was admired in central Virginia and beyond.

The voice that broadcast professional, collegiate and high school sporting events to Richmond-area audiences for more than four decades has fallen silent.

Frank P. Soden, whose engaging and ubiquitous on-the-air presence made him a sports legend in central Virginia and beyond, died Sunday after a brief illness. He was 91.

A large portion of Richmond’s baby-boom generation grew up with Mr. Soden’s distinctive descriptions of baseball, basketball and football games percolating in the background on radio station WRNL.

Often, it seemed as if only static received more airtime. Mr. Soden toiled as the play-by-play voice of the Richmond Virginians and Richmond Braves Class AAA baseball teams from 1954 to 1984. He also worked University of Virginia football (1952-54), Virginia Tech football (1956-68), University of Richmond basketball (1956-80), and UR football (1969-80).

Before he became a fixture at UR, Mr. Soden served as general manager and executive vice president at WRNL, which at the time was owned by Richmond Newspapers Inc.

He covered the Tuckahoe Nationals’ appearance in the 1968 Little League World Series and served on a yearly basis as the public-address announcer for a now-defunct Richmond tradition: the autumn Tobacco Festival Parade.

In the twilight of his career, he hosted “Battle of the Brains,” a weekly competition between teams of prep scholars, on WCVE-TV. Mr. Soden participated in occasional Sunday-afternoon broadcasts of Richmond Braves home games as recently as 2001.

Man and microphone seemed made for one another. Mr. Soden once told a reporter that he “always wanted to work in radio. As a kid, I’d walk around the house, pretending to be doing a baseball game. I never realized that dream could come true.”

Mr. Soden’s broadcasting style mirrored his personality. Both were genial, talkative and unfailingly considerate.

“If I can’t say anything good” about an athlete, “I try not to say anything bad,” Mr. Soden once said. “Of course honesty is necessary. But you don’t have to go to the extreme of being critical of a poor performance.”

Florida Marlins play-by-play man Dave Van Horne, who worked as Mr. Soden’s broadcast partner for three seasons in the 1960s, remembered his association with Mr. Soden as “a very lucky break for me. Frank was such a terrific teacher, a wonderful mentor for a young broadcaster.”

Mr. Soden’s signature characteristic when seated behind a microphone, Van Horne said, was devotion. “He genuinely loved not only the games but everyone involved in the games — and it showed.”

Van Horne wasn’t the only one who noticed. Mr. Soden, a New Jersey native who grew up in Hasbrouck Heights and served in Naval Intelligence during World War II, collected many accolades for his work in the broadcast booth.

He twice was chosen as Virginia’s sportscaster of the year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. He was saluted by the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame in 1982 for “accomplishments, service and contributions to athletics,” and again in 1998, with formal induction.

He was inducted into the UR Athletics Hall of Fame in 1997. In all, he was inducted into six halls of fame.

The press box at The Diamond was named in Mr. Soden’s honor. So was the Richmond Broadcasting Hall of Fame’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mr. Soden deserved nothing less, his colleagues say.

“Frank was the first broadcaster I worked with when I came to Richmond as the Braves’ play-by-play announcer fresh out of college. I had heard so much about him,” said Bob Black, now a UR assistant athletic director.

“I was nervous and in awe the first time I met him and broadcast a game with him. He welcomed me to the booth, the city and the broadcast community. It was immediately obvious how well-liked and respected he was from everyone he came in contact with — and how he treated everyone with such kindness and caring.

“He was popular among managers, coaches and players, too. They always asked about him and looked forward to talking with him.”

Van Horne said Mr. Soden was not only “a consummate professional” but also “a bit of an anomaly” in the broadcasting profession: “There are, let’s face it, a lot of very big egos in this business. Frank’s wasn’t one of them. He was a very special man, a person of the highest quality. He didn’t have a self-centered bone in his body.”

A microphone was not Mr. Soden’s only sports-related tool. He also was quite adept with a whistle. He worked with distinction for many years as a referee for area high school and college basketball games. The International Association of Approved Basketball Officials elected Mr. Soden as its president in 1964 and eventually awarded him its highest honor: lifetime association membership.

No less impressive, said former UR Athletic Director Chuck Boone, was Mr. Soden’s willingness to lend his name, time and effort to an array of community and/or charitable causes. Among them: the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the March of Dimes, the Special Olympics, Commonwealth Catholic Charities, and the Virginia Boys Home.

“Frank could say ‘no’ to no one. He loved his community,” Boone said. “Any time he was asked to do anything in this community, no matter what, he could not say ‘no.’ He did so many things for so many organizations.”

Boone said he once asked Mr. Soden about the depth of his civic involvement. “He said people treated him so wonderfully and made him feel so much at home when he first came to Richmond [in 1948] that he just felt an obligation to do as much as he could, whenever he could, to repay everyone for their kindness.”

The Virginia General Assembly formally commended Mr. Soden in 1998 for a “lifetime of extraordinary achievement and generosity.”

Survivors include a daughter, Maura Soden of Los Angeles; three sons, Dr. Kevin Soden of Charlotte, N.C., and Denis Soden and Brendan Soden of Richmond; a sister, Nancy Gara of Saddlebrook, N.J.; and 12 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

A Mass of Christian burial will be said Friday at 10 a.m. at St. Benedict Catholic Church with interment to follow at Greenwood Memorial Gardens.

vdorr@timesdispatch.com

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