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MEBANE -- Woody Durham, "The Voice of the Tar Heels" is humbled to be selected as the Grand Marshal for Friday's Mebane Christmas Parade.

Most people automatically associate Durham with Chapel Hill, but he was born in Mebane and lived there until he was 10 years old.

"There's a parking lot there now where our house used to stand," he said in that deep, soothing voice so familiar among Tar Heels fans.

The family moved to Mount Olive and Albemarle, where Durham spent most of his growing-up years. He played on the high school football team but said "I knew I wasn't big enough or good enough to play at the college level."

His first job in radio was before his junior year of high school at WZKY, a small AM station in Albemarle. After graduating from high school and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Durham said he focused more on TV than radio. He served as sports director at WFMY-TV in Greensboro for 14 years.

"My long-range goal was to be the TV voice for the ACC," he said.

When Durham, a Carolina fan, was asked to be the voice for Carolina sports, he asked his wife, Jean, for advice. The couple has two grown sons, Wes and Taylor, who now work in the broadcast business.

"She's always been the one with the best questions and advice, really. She said 'if you don't try this, you'll look back with regret. I had no idea I'd be doing it for 40 years before I'd step aside."

Durham announced his retirement on April 20. He said the late Cawood Ledford, longtime play-by-play announcer for the University of Kentucky basketball and football teams, once told him that "when it's time to retire, you'll know."

"I just felt my presence wasn't what I wanted it to be, so I felt it was time to retire," he said.

Durham is still active in Carolina sports and was in California on Veterans Day when Carolina's basketball team played Michigan State aboard the USS Carl Vinson.
"It was amazing. The players gave their jerseys to the soldiers. It was just incredible," Durham added.

Dean Ray of the Mebane Recreation and Parks Department said Durham was a natural choice for Grand Marshal.

"He was inducted into the Mebane Sports Hall of Fame and well, everyone knows him. But not everyone knows he's a native son," Ray said.

The Mebane Christmas Parade starts at 7 p.m. in downtown Mebane; rain date is Dec. 9. Admission is free.