'Ordinary' Sports Guy Will Introduce the President Once Again

Publicist Brotman, 81, Has Announced Inaugural Parades Since 1956

No one loves a parade, specifically an inaugural parade, more than Charlie Brotman. The irrepressible longtime Washington sports publicist once again will moonlight Tuesday as the public address announcer for yet another Pennsylvania Avenue extravaganza, a labor of non-partisan love he's happily handled since President Dwight D. Eisenhower's second term in 1956.

Now 81 but still brimming with boyish enthusiasm, Brotman has been behind the P.A. microphone, stationed on top of or inside the media viewing area directly across the street from the presidential reviewing stand, for every inaugural parade over the last 52 years. He'll have a script in his hands to identify every band, every float and every preening politician prancing past his perch, and almost certainly he'll go off message and ad lib (often at his own peril) to fill in some of the inevitable gaps in a three- to four-hour production.

"People always ask me, 'Are you nervous?' " Brotman said the other day. "No! I'm just excited. My adrenaline is sky high. It's never been ho-hum. I've never thought, 'Been there, done that, it's no big deal.' On the contrary, it is a very big deal."

Brotman still believes it was a complete fluke that he originally got the job. A native Washingtonian and 1946 graduate of McKinley Tech High School, Brotman was working in 1956 as a fledgling radio and television sports announcer in Orlando when he went to a spring training game and was introduced to Washington Senators owner Calvin Griffith. Griffith told him he had an opening for a public address announcer at the ball park and asked Brotman to come back up to his home town and audition.

Much to his delight, Brotman was hired at $36 a week, with part-time duties as an assistant to Senators team publicist Herb Heft, and moved north a week before the start of the '56 regular season. On opening day, Eisenhower was in attendance to throw out the traditional presidential first pitch, and the Yankees were prevailing, as usual, when the Senators made a pitching change. Brotman's spotter told him he was pretty sure the new man on the mound was going to be reliever Truman Cleavinger, but as Brotman began his public address introduction, his spotter, not completely certain who was coming in out of the bullpen, cut him off at "now pitching for Washington...Truman."

There was a long pause, until it was determined that it truly was Truman Cleavinger. But all Republican Eisenhower heard was "Truman," the Democrat he had succeeded in 1952. To this day, Brotman insists that when he looked down at the presidential box, he saw Eisenhower looking up at him with a large grin on his face, thinking the pregnant pause on "Truman" had all been a bit of a practical joke.

"Now it's November, 1956, and I get a call from a woman at the White House," Brotman recalled. "She says, 'Are you the one who introduced President Eisenhower when he threw out the first ball last spring?' I told her that was me and she said, 'Would you like to introduce him again?' I said 'When and where?' She said, 'Well you'll be the announcer for the inaugural parade.' Unbelievable.

"Over the years, I've learned that the parade is usually an extension of that president's personality. Eisenhower was a military man, a no-nonsense guy. For the first one, it was one float, one band per state and that was it. Two hours and it's done. I think his attitude was, 'Let's get it over with, I've got work to do.' "

Brotman got through his first parade with no major glitches, and thought that would be the end of it. Instead, four years later, there was another call, this time from the Kennedy White House.

"My name must have been on an index card in a file, and somebody must have said 'Let's give this guy a call,'" he said. "It was the first domino to fall, you might say. And this one will be my 14th in a row and 10th new president. Ike to Obama. It's a good thing I started doing this when I was three, or I'd be old. No really, I'm 81 and loving every minute of it."

He also has countless precious memories.

"The night before President Kennedy was inaugurated, six inches of snow came down," he recalled. "They got 3,000 servicemen, a hundred snowplows, guys with flame throwers to melt the snow and clear Pennsylvania Avenue. It was a very cold day, and the parade took four hours. I'm stationed directly across the street, but I'm standing on top of the media complex, not inside. It was me and the Secret Service men, and we all froze together."