When David Kellum was a kid, he would stand in front of the TV in the living room of his home in Oxford. With the volume dialed all the way down and a pencil in hand posing as a makeshift microphone, he’d begin to do the play-by-play of whatever baseball game was on that day.
“I literally did that. If there was a baseball game on, I’d call it to no one but myself. I just loved doing play-by-play. I was intrigued by it at a young age,” Kellum said.
David Kellum, play-by-play radio announcer for the Ole Miss Rebels, poses for a picture in the Manning Center. (Photo by: Cameron Brooks)
Fifty years later, Kellum is still doing the same thing, except that pencil is now a headset and microphone and the TV screen is now any of the spectacular venues the Southeastern Conference has to offer.
His voice is crisp and recognizable, informative but also relatable. His voice is the voice of Ole Miss athletics and has been for 27 years now, capturing the attention and narrating the memories of multiple generations of fans. One that gives you chill bumps.
“It’s the voice you recognize. It’s the voice in some ways that is comforting,” Richard Cross said.
Cross, an Oxford native, has experienced what many people across the state of Mississippi and beyond have with Kellum. Kellum’s voice painted a picture in his mind. Cross vividly remembers lying in his bed when he was in junior high and listening to a Governor’s Cup baseball game between the Rebels and Mississippi State in Jackson.
“I so desperately wanted to go to Jackson and watch the game, but I had the school the next morning. My parents weren’t taking me. I remember lying awake in bed, with the radio next to my bed,” Cross said. “I remember lying there listening to David and whoever the color guy was describe the game. In a lot of ways, it took me there.”
That’s been Kellum’s exact goal since he clung to that pencil at 12 years old standing in his living room.
“The most important thing for me is that when I’m doing the game, I want you to feel like you’re sitting there with me, or even doing the game with me,” Kellum said. “Because we have a lot in common. We are both fans of Ole Miss. We both want our team to be successful. We get excited when our team is doing good things, so it is a real easy connect.”
As Cross grew older, he too got into the broadcasting industry and a few years after lying in his bed listening to Kellum, he worked with him covering Ole Miss baseball for six years. He felt comfortable immediately.
“I think that’s a credit to David. He made me feel comfortable and like I was good enough to be there from the very beginning,” Cross said.
“It never felt like the moment was too big. It was a relationship that evolved. It was a level of trust that evolved. I think it got to the point where if something happened and David couldn’t be there, I don’t think he was worried about whether the broadcast was going to be good quality.”
Cross is now a co-host of Head to Head, a statewide radio show in Mississippi. He is also a correspondent with SEC Network. He credits Kellum for giving him a start.
“As I kind of grew past being a kid on the radio some to a broadcaster, our relationship grew,” Cross said. “David would qualify as a mentor, but even more so a friend.”
David Kellum, play-by-play radio announcer for the Ole Miss Rebels, poses for a picture outside the Manning Center. (Photo by: Cameron Brooks)
Kellum’s start came when he was still in high school. His mother worked in the theatre department at Ole Miss. He was in her office one day when a distraught manager from the student radio station came bursting into the hallway.
“This guy comes blowing out into the hallway and he says, ‘Is there anybody here that can do baseball? Everyone is gone. I need someone to do baseball.’ He was just kind of venting to the world,” Kellum remembers. “I said ‘I can do it,’ and he said, ‘Who are you?’”
Who was he? An 18-year-old kid with some confidence, though he kept his age concealed, assuming the man thought he was an Ole Miss student, and the job was his. Kellum called every game of the 1977 SEC baseball tournament that was hosted in Oxford.
And so it began. The next year, he was hired by a local radio station to call Ole Miss baseball while also serving as a disc jockey. He graduated Ole Miss in three years and remained in Oxford calling baseball, as well as some high school and junior high football. In 1983, he opened his own station with long-time friend Russell Lamb.
In 1989 he got a call that would change his career. TelSouth Communications hired him to be the lead voice of Ole Miss sports. He was officially the voice of the Rebels.
“I was elated. I about hit my head on the ceiling when I got off the phone,” Kellum said.
It spawned a now-27-year career in which he works 110 games a year. He’s been to nearly every major city in the country in some capacity and every SEC town upwards of 30 times. One thing about Kellum that sticks out to most people is his tedious and methodical preparation.
Kellum has every baseball scorecard of every game he’s called. He keeps the box scores of each basketball game and depth charts and drive sheets of each football game he works. The cards sit in his home, now taking up two drawers.
“I kind of laugh sometimes because he would almost go overboard to an extent from a preparation standpoint and getting ready for a game,” Cross said. “He may go back through a decade or two to look at a Georgia game or a Georgia series to see if there is an interesting nugget that he may use on the pregame show.”
More than 100 games a year is a lot of travel, and when his two daughters Stefanie and Staci came along, it got harder. That’s where he credits his wife, Mary, for helping make it all happen.
“She knew my passion was to do that, so I think she knew what she was getting into,” Kellum said. “We worked really hard for her to travel as much as she could with us.”
The two were high school sweethearts and have been married for more than 30 years. She traveled as much as she could before the kids came along, but they still made it work.
“I went through a guilty complex, just feeling like I am not able to spend as much time with my children as I needed to, and it put a lot of stress on folks,” Kellum said. “But we worked it out really good.”
It’s a relationship of reliance, understanding and friendship.
“He trusts Mary implicitly. There is so much that goes into travel and preparing for games and she’s always kind of handled the book keeping and kept him in order on that,” Cross said. “She’s been at so many events through the years. She loves Ole Miss. She loves going to ball parks and she loves going to games.”
She works in the booth with him at home games and travels when she can. She was up there last week for the Alabama game.
“They’re a team,” Jeff Roberson, a long-time Oxford resident and former Ole Miss Spirit reporter, said. “Mary is very supportive and such a great person, too.”
They still find sites to see, even after all of the repeat visits. Last year in Birmingham, Kellum wanted to see Rickwood Field, the oldest professional baseball park in the United States. Mary came with him.
David Kellum, play-by-play radio announcer for the Ole Miss Rebels, poses for a picture inside the press box at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. (Photo by: Cameron Brooks)
“I was like a little kid walking around that field taking pictures and everything. I’m not sure how much she enjoyed it, but she at least acted like she did,” Kellum joked.
Because he started at such a young age – Kellum has called 27 years in football and basketball and nearly 40 in baseball – some think he’s older than he actually is. There will be a time when he takes the headset off for the last time, but that’s something Kellum will gauge off desire rather than age.
“If I lose my passion for it and lose the love for it then yeah, it’s time to move on, but I absolutely love it,” Kellum said. “I love traveling. I love meeting the players and calling the games are really special.”
He’s thankful that he hasn’t reached that point.
“There are people that have only heard David Kellum’s voice, and they’re in their 30s and 40s now. He’s the guy that they’ve listened to for their entire life with Ole Miss sports,” Roberson said. “His love for Ole Miss being so great, there’s a whole couple of generations now that he’s the guy that they remember growing up with and listening to. He is the memories that they have.”
Roberson sometimes finds himself caught up in one of Kellum’s calls. Yesterday, while scrolling through Twitter, he stumbled upon a Kellum call of Ole Miss against Georgia in 1989.
“I was at the game and remember that, but it was David’s voice that brought us back to that day in 1989 in Vaught-Hemingway stadium when Ole Miss beat Georgia 17-13 on a day for the program,” Roberson said. “Even I get get a little bit of the thrill and the chill when I hear something that he’s called through the years that I’ll remember.”
David Kellum, play-by-play radio announcer for the Ole Miss Rebels, poses for a picture inside the press box at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. (Photo by: Cameron Brooks)
Kellum said he often has to take a step back and pinch himself, because it is still hard to believe how this all came to be. He lived his dream in a town he’s called home for life, at a school he’s loved his entire life, working a job that he dreamed of his entire life. Since he was a boy in front of his TV.
“You could pick me up and stick me at another school and I’d probably flourish and probably do fine,” Kellum said. “But since I’m here at my school, I live and die with everything that happens. I am for the people. A lot of guys in the pro game could walk away and no big deal. In my case, it’s a passion that I want our program to be successful. I want the people involved to be successful and I just enjoy being around them.”
