Media

Waldo Grigoroff

Year Inducted: 2002

Category: Media

Schools / Organizations:
WTIM Radio (Taylorville), WCVS Radio (Springfield), KNIM Radio (Maryville, Missouri), WEIC Radio (Charleston), WLBH-FM Radio (Mattoon), Eastern Illinois University

Biography: 

“Man alive,” Dr. Waldo Grigoroff headed “downcourt” to the IBCA Basketball Hall of Fame. Grigoroff, known for his radio name of Marc Stuart, made those phrases familiar to basketball fans around Charleston.

Grigoroff began his love for this game at Granite City High School. He was a starter with Andy Phillip, a member of the University of Illinois Whiz Kids and an 11-year NBA veteran, until mid-year graduation on a team which won the 1940 state championship.

He was teaching government and history at Taylorville High School when he began doing play-by-play of the Taylorville Tornadoes for local radio station WTIM in the early 1950s. He would switch to the microphones at WCVS in Springfield, using the Stuart name, and in 1960 moved to KNIM in Maryville, Missouri. 

Grigoroff returned to full-time teaching in 1961 at the Eastern Illinois University Laboratory School. A year later he became the public address announcer for all sports at Eastern.

In the 1970s, Grigoroff was back in radio broadcasting for WEIC in Charleston and later for WLBH in Mattoon, describing Eastern Illinois Panthers basketball action. In 1976, he called Eastern Illinois’ third-place finish in the NCAA Division II NCAA tournament on a network spanning 63,486 square miles.

In 1988, when he retired, Dr. Grigoroff was associated with EIU athletics as a public address announcer or play-by-play broadcaster since 1962. Grigoroff died on 2019 at the age of 95.