The Unsung: 'The Voice of Wayne' remains steadfast in spite of heartbreak

Editor's note: This is an occasional feature on the unsung people who live among us and brighten our lives. Do you know someone who stands out? Send me a note at sportelli@northjersey.com.

Ernest "Ernie" Mezey is known to many as "the Voice."

His distinctive, controlled, husky voice is synonymous with high school football in Wayne and North Jersey.

The 79-year-old just wrapped his 23rd year as Wayne Hills High School's football play-by-play announcer. Before COVID shut down high school sports in 2020, he was also the announcer for the school's basketball games.

This is not a story about Mezey’s retirement; no way, he said. He’ll keep doing it as long as it continues to be fun and as long as he can climb the 55 bleacher steps to get to the announcer’s booth.

Mezey has made lots of friends and fans in those 23 years. Former student-athletes say his voice transports them back in time to their high school gridiron or hardwood days. Ditto for their parents who watched and listened from the bleachers.

His face, topped with thick, neatly parted snow-white hair, on the other hand, is recognized mostly by those closest to him. It's those same people who know that behind his steady voice there's tragedy and heartbreak, and cancer is to blame.

The announcer

On a warm Friday night in late October, as the sun sets on the Wayne Hills High School football field, Mezey climbs those 55 steps to the small maroon wooden announcer's booth. In one hand he holds a jacket for when the weather turns cool later, in the other a worn black leather briefcase filled with notes for that night's game.

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As part of his pregame ritual to shake off the ”jitters” and to gather information, Mezey walks the football field and talks to coaches. He's gathering intel to help him with the play-by-play, name pronunciations, captains' names and other stats.

Everyone on the field knows him. They stop to talk and catch up. He's very humble and surprised so many want to talk to him. On this night he's approached by Class of 2007 graduate and former football standout David Ogden. Fifteen years after graduating from high school, Ogden, who played college ball for Monmouth University, said Mezey's voice brings back great memories. "He's the Voice. The Voice," Ogden said.

Funnily enough, Mezey says he doesn't like the sound of his voice. He recently watched an older game from the 1990s online, and when he heard his voice, he "wasn't impressed."

Once Mezey has the information he needs, he sits alone on the sideline bench and makes notes as players warm up and the sun sets behind him.

He highlights some names in yellow, and next to others, in neat letters, he writes players' names phonetically. On this night, one of the highlighted names on the sheet is Stavros Makrygiannis from the Passaic Valley Hornets, the visiting team. Mezey would pronounce "Mack-rah-giannis" over and over that night.

He makes an identical "cheat sheet" for his spotter in the booth, Joe Mongelli, whose son Johnny plays for Wayne Hills. There have been many spotters who have whispered plays and players' names into Mezey's ear. It's hard for the announcer to catch all the action on the field, Mezey said, especially when that announcer "didn't know anything about football" when he started out.

How does someone who freely admits to not knowing anything about football and doesn't like the sound of his own voice get a job as the play-by-play announcer?

Mezey says it was about being in the right place at the right time, a bad financial decision and a little advice from another great voice, the late Bob Sheppard, the longtime public announcer for the Yankees and the Giants.

Bad financial decision

A bad financial investment more than two decades ago left Mezey in search of extra income.

The Seton Hall University graduate worked for some major American corporations after he left the Army in 1968. In the late 1980s, he lost his job. That left him "floundering for a while." After some "bad jobs," he invested in a print shop franchise that eventually failed. He lost his savings and almost lost the Pines Lake home in Wayne he shared with his wife, Marilyn, and their two children.

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"I needed to make some extra cash," Mezey said. So he took lots of odd jobs, including umpiring baseball and softball games and driving a limousine, and in 1999 he began to run the time clock for Wayne Hills High School basketball games.

While he was managing the clock during a game, Joe Ascolese, the athletic director at the time, and Margaret Doherty, the trainer, asked him also to make the pregame announcements and call out players' names as they ran onto the court. Mezey took the assignment seriously and wrote a script with notes on how to pronounce the names. He saved that first script and keeps it in his black briefcase.

"These are the first words I ever announced," Mezey said of that script. He also has others from the last 23 years in that worn briefcase.

He was a success, and the job was his after that, followed by a request for him to announce football games too. That's when he met Sheppard, the venerable announcer for the Yankees and the football Giants.

Still a limo driver at that time, Mezey was hired to drive a group from North Jersey to a Yankees game in the Bronx. There he bought a ticket and went into the stadium. Listening to Sheppard gave him an idea — ask him for advice on his new announcing gig. He approached a security officer and told him of his plan. The officer talked to Sheppard, who came out to meet with Mezey. The two talked for about 10 minutes.

"He says to me, 'It's not about you; don't make it about yourself. It's about them,'" Mezey said of the players. "He also told me to speak distinctly and clearly."

Around the same time, Mezey found a permanent job with the Passaic County Prosecutor's Office as a victim and witness advocate, a job that was "very rewarding" but dealt with the "dark side of life: murder, rape, child abuse." At that time he gave up the odd jobs except the announcer gig. He retired from the Prosecutor's Office job last year.

He sits in the dining room of the home he almost lost, on floral upholstered chairs his wife picked out, and talks of his struggles with his career. Those struggles, though, can never compare to the heartache and devastation of losing the love of his life to cancer.

Cancer, the common denominator

Cancer has been a constant in Mezey's life since 1977. It took his wife, Marilyn, and later put an end to his second chance at love.

In 1977, just two years after he was married, "the bottom dropped out" when 29-year-old Marilyn, a high school teacher, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a unilateral mastectomy followed by chemotherapy.

As all survivors of cancer and their loved ones know, those yearly checkups after the diagnosis are frightening. Did cancer come back? The young couple celebrated the good news by having a fancy dinner out.

After two years of good news, doctors found a spot on Marilyn's lungs. The top lobe of one lung was removed. She turned down other treatments. She wanted to get pregnant and have a baby.

That was August of 1980; "by December of that year she was pregnant," and their son was born in 1981. A daughter followed three years after.

For 20 years after the lung surgery, the couple got busy raising their children. They ran from one event to another and celebrated many milestones. For 20 years they lived with the fear that cancer would return, but also celebrated being "cancer free" with fancy meals out.

Things changed in 2000.

"I was in Florida, and she called me." Mezey takes a short break and a few deep breaths. After all this time, he said, he can't believe how emotional he's becoming.

"She called me and told me she had been diagnosed with cancer in her other breast."

Another pause. Some more deep breaths.

"She had massive doses of chemo. Two years later, she got sicker," Mezey said. Marilyn was also diagnosed with lymphoma.

"A lot of times the challenges in life that you are going through, you're doing what you gotta do and you're really not thinking about it, but in retrospect when you look back on things, you say to yourself, 'How the hell did you get through that?'" he said.

The toughest challenge was still to come.

In 2003 doctors told the couple Marilyn had about two weeks to live. She was 54 years old.

"I had to go home and tell the kids," Mezey said. Michael was 21 and Lauren was 18. She had just attended her high school senior prom.

"I remember Lauren went to senior prom and then down the shore. When she came back, she walked into the house with her friends and was laughing."

Here Mezey cries. He stops and works to compose himself. "It's rough. I'll get over this in a minute."

"I have to sit her down and I have to tell her." It was a shock to the children, because they never knew just how sick their mother was. Through her struggles, she protected them from the bad news.

Mezey told them, and shortly after, his beloved Marilyn died.

"It was the toughest moment of my life," he said.

Years later he met a woman whose husband had also died at the hands of cancer. The two began to date and were engaged when Mezey was diagnosed with prostate and kidney cancer. The fear of possibly losing another husband to cancer was too much, and the couple ended the relationship.

Mezey said his daughter has him on lots of good supplements, and between that and medical care, he's doing great.

The 'jitters' and the fans

Even after all these years, Mezey still gets the "jitters" before each game. He's afraid he'll make a mistake and ruin a special moment for players and their families. During the late-October game, after wrongly identifying a player in a play, he quickly announced, "Correction," in his deep voice so familiar, and set the record straight.

The jitters keep him on his toes and helped him during a 55-game winning streak by the Wayne Hills Patriots from 2004 to 2009 when the stands were packed with fans.

The winning streak came under the guidance of then-coach Chris Olsen, also the father of NFL retired player-turned-announcer Greg Olsen.

ChrisOlsen moved out of state after he retired in 2013 but visits the area often, and when he does, he meets Mezey for breakfast.

"He's a good friend to me. He is the voice of Wayne Hills football," Olsen said. "It's not Friday night without Ernie up there announcing the game ... his voice is so distinctive and pleasant to listen to."

Olsen said Mezey's knowledge of the players, the games and the team's history is impressive. "He's not just an announcer," Olsen said. "He cares what happens to the kids, their wellness."

Mezey is also someone who has united the community with his voice and speeches after tragedy, Olsen said, as he did after 9/11.

When the team took the field a few days after the attacks that killed 2,996 people, seven of them from Wayne, Mezey "had an unbelievably prepared speech. I will remember that speech forever." So will Olsen's wife, Susan, also a cancer survivor. She said Mezey's 9/11 speech still gives her "goosebumps."

Current football coach Wayne Demikoff also calls himself a Mezey fan and friend.

"Ernie is the voice of Wayne Hills football. He has always supported the program. The kids, parents and coaches look at him as a valued member of the program," said Demikoff, who is also impressed with Mezey's knowledge of the past.

"His game-day voice makes each game and year special to everyone. I couldn't imagine a better person to represent our program and its history. I consider him a true friend," Demikoff said.

As far as basketball, the team has to get along without Mezey's steady voice.

"Every time I heard Ernie say 'Welcome to the Gifford Gymnasium,' I knew it was go time. I’ll forever appreciate Ernie’s contributions to our program, but more so our conversations pregame," said Kevin Grimes, Wayne Hills' boys basketball coach.

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'Blessed' in spite of it all

"I learned at a very young age what's important. Material things you can have a lot, but if you don't have your health you don't have anything," Mezey said.

In spite of it all, Mezey said, he's blessed. "I will tell you, I have been blessed in my life, in spite of the things that I have been through."

He is proud of his two children, now 41 and 38, and his two grandchildren. He looks forward to their visits.

"Having grandchildren is a gigantic thing," he said. "When they walk through that front door they can do anything they want." He points to the neat pile of toys in front of the fireplace in his living room. He said those are the same toys his children once played with, now awaiting his grandchildren. There's also exercise equipment nearby to benefit his health and musical instruments to benefit his mind.

There's also a possible new love interest, but too soon to talk about. He has butterflies and gets nervous before he sees her or calls, so that's a good sign, he said.

He has lots to look forward to. For now, he'll rest during the cold New Jersey winter. He'll go bowling, dress up as Santa again during the holidays and anticipate his 24th season in the maroon wooden booth atop the 55 bleacher steps.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: The Unsung: Meet Ernie Mezey, the man who is 'the Voice of Wayne'