PORT ANGELES — Hall-of-fame radio personality and sportscaster Scooter Chapman is retiring and hanging up his microphone after 70 years working at KONP in Port Angeles.
To celebrate the venerable Chapman’s career, KONP has declared Monday through Friday as “Scooter Chapman Week.”
Chapman will appear on the 8:30 a.m. Morning Scramble each morning. He will also join the Todd Ortloff Show for full segments on Wednesday and Thursday.
Thursday’s show will be devoted to Chapman taking calls from listeners.
The community is encouraged to share thoughts and memories with Scooter by mail or electronically at www.myclallamcounty.com.
Cards and memories may also be dropped off in person at the radio station anytime during the week. The address of KONP is 721 E. First Street, Suite 101 in Port Angeles.
Hall-of-Fame career
Chapman, a teenager at the time, began his radio career in 1951, when he arrived at the station and took on multiple tasks from sweeping floors to spinning a few disks. As a junior at Roosevelt High School, he started assisting Ralph Gallacci doing play-by-play for the Port Angeles Roughrider football games. He gained a knowledge of sports by listening to Leo Lassen broadcast Seattle Rainier baseball games.
After graduating high school in 1952 and attending the University of Washington, Chapman returned to Port Angeles and found time to hang around the station before being drafted in 1957 for a two-year stint in the Army as a radio broadcast specialist. That paved the way for his journalistic career in communications.
Soon after arriving back in Port Angeles, he began working for the Evening News as a sports editor and at KONP as sports director. This was in the days when the newspaper and the radio station were owned by the same family. For more than 30 years, he was sports editor for both KONP and the Port Angeles Evening News.
Numerous inductions
Chapman would be inducted into the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) Hall of Fame, not only for his sports broadcasting career calling games on the radio, but also as a news reporter and sports official, particularly for baseball and softball contests.
In 2016, he was inducted into the Peninsula College Athletics Hall of Fame. In September 2017, as a testament to his value to the community, the Port Angeles High School named the press box at the high school’s Civic Field “Scooter Chapman Press Box.”
“All my honors have come with me still alive, and I really appreciate it,” Chapman said in 2017. “It’s something you don’t expect in life, but it’s a big honor, I’m really proud of it, and I’m glad to get the recognition for all of the many years with Roughrider athletics.”
In 2018, Chapman also was inducted into the Port Angeles Roughriders Athletic Hall of Fame.
Chapman may be one of the most recognizable citizens in Clallam County for his decades of refereeing, umpiring, reporting and broadcasting, including more than 2,000 games officiated and his duties as emcee and announcer for area parades, fundraisers and events.
KONP radio host Scooter Chapman sits in the control room in Port Angeles ahead of his induction into the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association in 2011. (Peninsula Daily News file)
