MOULTRIE – Durwood Dominy has a clear idea of what he wants to do each time he puts on the headsets and grabs a microphone to broadcast a Colquitt County football or baseball game.

And it is deeper and broader than just making sure what yard line the football is spotted on or whether the strike to the batter was swung on or called by the umpire.

“I consider it a ministry,” says Dominy, who for 33 years has been the “Voice of the Packers.” “I hear from so many elderly people who can’t get out to the games and enjoy listening to them. I just sit there and try to draw a picture for those who can’t be there. I want them to visualize what I see.”

Many of them know Dominy primarily by his distinctive voice and associate it with Packer sports.

There have been fans who have heard him speak in public and, thought, “I recognize that voice.” They had heard it coming through the speakers on their radio. And it was a familiar, friendly and reassuring one.

And for at least one other listener of the WMTM broadcasts, there is another reason that Dominy’s knowledge and spot-on descriptions are so important.

Dominy says that in the early 1990s, he received a telephone call from a knowledgeable Colquitt County fan who introduced himself as Paul Glass. The two talked Packer football for a while and Dominy said, “At the next football game, why don’t you come up to the press box. I’d like to meet you.”

Dominy remembers Glass answering, “I can’t see the game. I’m blind. But I can see every play from the 50-yard line through your voice.”

“That sent cold chills over me,” Dominy says. “He is an example of what I enjoy about it.”

On October 25, Dominy will be among the nine individuals and two teams enshrined in the 2018 Class of the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame.

Joining him in being inducted are former Packer football players Brian Jordan, Sherard Reynolds, Brian Knighton and Matt Parker; basketball players Britney Wetherington Mobley and Sarah Edwards; and outstanding track athletes Amy Paine Hines and Armanti Jamal Hayes.

The Hall of Fame also will honor the 1963 state runner-up Moultrie High School football team and the Riverside Cotton Mill baseball team.

Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at the Colquitt County Chamber of Commerce and Modern Cleaners. The honorees will be introduced on the sideline facing the home stands on Tom White Field at Mack Tharpe Stadium before the October 26 Region 1-7A football game between Colquitt County and Lowndes.

After he is introduced on the field that night, Dominy will make the customary trip up the stadium steps to the press box where he has broadcast games for radio station WMTM since 1985.

That he is so connected to Colquitt County football is somewhat surprising. He never played football growing up in Twiggs County.

“I never even saw a football game until I was in my late teens,” he says.

Twiggs County was a Class C school that did not have a football program when Dominy graduated in 1962. In fact, there were just 32 students in his graduating class.

He did play on the basketball and baseball teams and he ran track.

After graduating, he went to Norman Junior College, where he met his future wife Norma.

He soon went into the banking business in Atlanta and Athens and was transferred to the C&S Bank in Moultrie in 1971.

“I begged them not to send me here,” he says. “I told them, ‘You’re sending me to the end of the world.’”

But after six months, “I fell in love with it.”

In 1974, he was transferred back to Athens, but hoped to be able to return to Colquitt County.

During his time in Moultrie, he had struck up a friendship with Wayne McKellar and in 1977 he became the co-owner of McKellar Motors.

He and Norma have been in Colquitt County ever since, raising their four daughters here.

While at McKellar Motors, he had cut some radio and television commercials and one day he received a call from Art Sutton at radio station WMGA. Sutton told Dominy he wanted him to do Packer football play-by-play for his station.

“I told him I was honored, but that one of my best friends was Donnie Turner (owner of WMGA’s competitor, WMTM),” he said. “I told him before I’d do anything, I’d have to call Donnie.”

Turner told him to call Sutton back and respectfully decline the offer.

The next Friday night, Dominy called his first Packers football game for WMTM replacing Jack Shiver and he has been behind the microphone for the station’s broadcasts of football and baseball games ever since.

He remembers his first broadcast well.

“I was scared to death,” he says.

But he developed a style that has become familiar to thousands of fans in WMTM’s large coverage area over the last 33 years.

Although knowledgeable of the “X’s and O’s” and other football terminology, he avoids most of it.

“Compared to most play-by-play guys, I just do it in the simplest form,” he says. “I just try to draw a picture and tell people what I’m seeing.”

He employs that style while calling Packer baseball games as well. He was behind the microphone when the Jerry Croft-coached Packers won state titles in 1997 and 2003.

“I have been fortunate to call two state championship series,” Dominy says. “Not a lot of people can say that.”

He also was in the booth when the football Packers went 15-0 and won state championships in 1994, 2014 and 2015.

He also fondly remembers Colquitt County’s 7-0 victory at Valdosta in 1989. At Cleveland Field that night was a crew from ABC-TV’s 20/20 news magazine, filming a feature on the Wildcats.

And he has called some heartbreakers as well.

He recalls the Packers 1991 state championship game loss to LaGrange at Mack Tharpe Stadium when the Grangers kicked a winning field goal with 13 seconds remaining.

The most disheartening came just last December when North Gwinnett defeated the Packers 19-17 in the 2017 Class 7A state championship game on an untimed-down field goal.

Colquitt County had scored a go-ahead touchdown with 49 seconds remaining, but could not hold the 17-16 lead.

“It seems like you remember some of those losses more than you do the great wins,” Dominy says.

For much of his time as the Packers’ play-by-play man, Dominy has had Darrell Strange as his “color man” and station owner Jim Turner as the in-booth producer.

“Having Darrell and Jim there has added a lot of color to the broadcast,” Dominy says. “I appreciate what they have done. They have added as much to the broadcasts as I have.”

Dominy and Jim Turner have been close over the years, especially after Donnie Turner, Jim’s father, died in 1996. Turner has been running the station since his father’s death.

“Durwood is the best thing that has happened to WMTM and Packer football,” Turner says. “There’s no question about that.

“But he has been more than that. He has been a father-figure for me and also my best friend. I know when I ask him a question, I’m going to get a straight answer. He’s been a great life coach for me.”

Dominy also has been involved in a number of civic activities, including the Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Moultrie-Colquitt County Chamber of Commerce, the United Way and, Sunset Country Club. He also has been a Sunday School teacher and is the chairman of the deacons at First Baptist Church.

Since 1991, he has been a member of the Colquitt County Hospital Authority and is in his third term on the state hospital board. He also is a member of the region policy board and the governing board of the American Hospital Association.

He also has served on the board of the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame and now will have his name listed among the community’s sports legends.

“I am very humbled by my selection (to the Hall of Fame),” he says. “There are a lot of great people in there.”