Looking back on a legend

It wasn’t long after I heard about Myron Cope’s passing that I remembered.

It took a little… It wasn’t long after I heard about Myron Cope’s passing that I remembered.

It took a little nudge of the memory from Steelers President Art Rooney II, who issued a public statement about the legendary Steelers broadcaster to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“Myron touched the hearts of Steelers fans for 35 years and became one of the true legends in broadcasting history,” Rooney said. “His memorable voice and unique broadcasting style became synonymous with Steelers football.”

Here’s the part that hit me:

“They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery, and no Pittsburgh broadcaster was impersonated more than Myron.”

For those who don’t know me well enough, I like to do a lot of impressions. Just so happens, the first impression I ever mastered and performed over and over again to friends and family – both because they wanted to hear it and because I wanted to do it – was Myron Cope.

I don’t remember what I used to say, but I remember the way everyone, including myself, laughed whenever I did the Myron Cope impression. It was a way to celebrate having someone so unique with such an unusual, sometimes squirrelly and always colloquial personality in the public view. And it brought us so much pride and happiness.

Myron Cope was a Pittsburgh icon, even if he was a physically unimpressive one. He was there when my parents lived through the Steelers dynasty and Pittsburgh’s coronation in the 1970s. He was there when I wore a foam steel beam on my head everywhere I went in the mid-1990s with his own unmistakably gold Terrible Towel hanging out of my back pocket. Myron Cope was passed on from generations of Steelers fans and Pittsburghers, as much a part of the team’s identity as Bill Cowher or Chuck Noll.

He was uniquely ours. Like Harry Caray to Chicago, Myron Cope was Pittsburgh’s own, unusual flaws and unidentifiable over-the-air utterances and all. I remember when an old boyfriend of my cousin’s, who was from the Philadelphia area, asked who Myron Cope was, and all 12 years and 110 pounds of me got legitimately angry.

“As a big football city, we all grew up watching the Steelers, and Myron Cope is really the heartbeat of the Pittsburgh Steelers in many ways,” Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl told the Post-Gazette.

Like tales of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, Myron Cope was sewn into my upbringing. Whenever Christmas time came around, it meant more than snow, more than toys and presents and family. It meant “Cope’s Christmas Carol,” too, set to the tune of “Deck the Halls.” Denouncing the Cincinnati “Bungals,” rhyming Jerry Olsavsky with nothing that sounded like Olsavsky and turning the chorus from “Fa-la-la-la-la” to “Fa-ga-ga-ga-ga” are as familiar to me as “Oh, Christmas Tree” or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

I can’t count the times I laughed hysterically whenever Myron Cope said something on the radio that I couldn’t quite decipher. But I ate every bit of it up. And I tried my best to re-enact it – to share it with as many people as I possibly could.

Cope wrote his own biography, titled – with no explanation needed for anyone who will appreciate this column – “Double Yoi.” One Christmas morning, I had a copy stuffed inside my stocking. Inside the front cover, it was signed and personalized.

“Yo Pat!” Myron wrote. “I hear your impression of me is okle-dokle!”

I’ll keep that book forever. Whether or not my kids or their kids will be able to appreciate it like I do is uncertain. I can only hope, though, that they’re lucky enough to have someone like Myron, so genuine and so lovably flawed, who can give them memories like he did for me.

Sure, Myron Cope was a renowned broadcaster and writer. But he was a city’s comfort, a visible symbol that being yourself was acceptable, even lovable.

I can’t do the impression anymore. My voice inevitably changed, and I can’t hit Cope’s high-pitched grumble like I used to. But there will be new personalities for future generations to imitate. As long as at least one of them can give what Myron Cope gave to Pittsburgh, he will always be remembered.