When I turned on the radio to listen to the Browns-Minnesota Vikings preseason game a couple of weeks ago, I was taken aback.

I thought that Jim Donovan was going to be in his customary rule as play-by-play announcer for the game, but the man I heard on the radio certainly did not sound like him. The voice was husky and raspy. It’s sounded like it it came from somebody who was out of breath snd straining to talk.

Finally, in the banner back-and-forth in the booth with substitute color analyst Je’Rod Cherry, I realize that it was indeed Donovan’s voice I was hearing.

I immediately called my good friend, former longtime Browns beat writer Mike McLain of the Warren Tribune-Chronicle, to tell him what was going on. It was sad, because we both knew what this meant. Jim sounded sick, and we could ascertain that he was. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

So it was not a real surprise, then, when, a week or so later, Donovan‘s letter to the Browns was made public, and we learnrd that, according to him, the cancer had returned and had done so aggressively, and so he was going to retire from his position as the play-by-man — The Voice of the Cleveland Browns — after 25 years so to concentrate fully on putting on the fight of his life, for his life.

So, what can we — those of us in the listening audience — do to help?

Steve King