Bill Flemming
| William Norman Flemming | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 3, 1926 Chicago, Illinois |
| Died | July 20, 2007 (aged 80) Petoskey, Michigan |
| Nationality |
 United States
|
| Alma mater | University of Michigan |
| Occupation | Television sports journalist |
William Norman "Bill" Flemming (September 3, 1926 – July 20, 2007) was an American television sports journalist who was one of the original announcers for the ABC Sports show Wide World of Sports.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Flemming moved with his family to Ann Arbor, Michigan by the time he entered high school. While at Ann Arbor High School, he was a member of their state championship football team in 1943. Flemming was also a member of the high school basketball team.
Attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, he entered as a Pre-medical major, but switched to speech after winning a campus wide speech contest which earned him a summer job at WUOM, the campus radio station. Flemming would work his way up to sports director of the radio station. He was a member of Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity.
After graduating from Michigan, he went to work for WWJ-TV in Detroit in 1953 and later appeared on NBC's Today Show before joining ABC's Wide World of Sports in 1961. He was the original voice of the Detroit Pistons, calling their radio broadcasts from 1957 (their first season in Detroit) to 1962. While with ABC, Flemming covered over 600 events for the program, including college football, golf and cliff-diving. One of the assignments he cherished broadcasting was the Michigan-Ohio State football game since Flemming was a Michigan graduate. Other sports that Flemming called on Wide World of Sports were bobsledding,chess, auto racing and the Olympic Games. His first event called on ABC was the Drake Relays track and field event in Des Moines, Iowa while his fellow broadcaster Jim McKay called the Penn Relays athletic event in Philadelphia. While at NBC, Flemming also called the US Open golf tournament in 1957. It was Flemming's reputation for tact and persistence that made him the go-to man in interviewing the reclusive Bobby Fischer during the 1972 World Chess Championships in Reykjavík, Iceland when Fischer was competing against defending champion Boris Spassky of the then-Soviet Union.
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