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Five Flags Honors Marty White: From Principal’s Office At Tate High To Radio Icon

Five Flags Speedway held a special sendoff Friday night for Marty White, longtime Pensacola radio personality. He was honored by Sen. Greg Evers and Escambia Commissioner Wilson Robertson, awarded a trophy (with an upside-down car that was on fire), and given a Yeti cooler. His remarkable radio career can be traced back to his days at Tate High School.

By Chuck Corder

Would you be shocked to learn the man, who has entertained Pensacola radio listeners for four decades with his blue-collar comedy and homespun delivery, started out in the principal’s office?

If we’re going to blame somebody, Burma Davis is a kind and decent soul to begin with.  It was 1972 and Davis, the youngest principal’s secretary ever hired at Tate High School, had her plate full of responsibilities.

One of those was overseeing the office assistants — a group of student workers, seniors mostly, who served as de facto ambassadors for the sprawling, 80-acre school.

Davis, then just 25 years old, had to find tasks to keep the teenagers’ idle hands busy. After all, they were receiving course credits for answering phones, greeting visitors, providing directions for lost deliverymen. It wasn’t like they were going to skip out on such an easy “A.”

Like a hive of worker bees, students parked themselves at Davis’ desk and awaited further instructions.

She plucked one young man, a senior with an engaging and effervescent personality, to boom the morning announcements through the school’s speakers. “He had a lot of personality, full of confidence and was real creative,” Davis remembers.

Nearly 45 years after Marty White got his high school “break,” the longtime and popular disc jockey at NASH 102.7 FM can still be described as full of personality, confident and creative.

And on days, when Davis was forced to tap other students to meekly perform the same announcements, she got peppered with the same question in the school’s hallways.

“Where’s Marty?” classmates asked Davis. “We love it when he does ’em.”

A Chapter Worth Celebrating

To this day, Pensacolians still love the sound of 59-year-old Marty White’s voice. They’ll only get to enjoy that privilege a little while longer before he officially retires later this month.

And for a few years, Pensacolians loved to watch him race at Five Flags Speedway.

Those are just two of the many reasons why White was honored at the famed half-mile asphalt Friday night — Marty White Appreciation Night.  Two from now, on June 26, Marty will hang up his microphone for good and broadcast his last show before heading into a glorious sunset of rocking chairs, golfing, hunting, fishing and honey-doing.

“We’re so proud of him,” said Donna White, Marty’s (much) better half for 27 years. “He’d give you the shirt off his back without knowing you. I appreciate (Five Flags general manager) Tim (Bryant) and all of y’all for thinking to do this. (Marty) wanted no hullabaloo, just something short and sweet, so I’m tickled to death about this.”

It was a busy Marty White Appreciation Night thanks to its annual children’s bicycle races, a 50-lap Modifieds of Mayhem feature in addition to Super Stocks, Sportsman and Bombers heats and features.

For more than 20 years in Pensacola and across the Florida Panhandle, Marty White became a prominent fixture on radio dials thanks to the “Hometown Morning Show.”

“Radio has been good to us,” Donna said. “We’ve had a lotta good times; he’s done stuff you normally wouldn’t get to do.

“He flew with the Blue Angels. He was in a blimp. He played a lotta golf. And he’s done a lot for this community — that’s a gimme. When (hurricanes) come around, we don’t see Marty until it’s over and everything is secure. He loves that part of radio, keeping the people informed, as much as anything else.”

He celebrated 40 years in radio earlier this year, most of those coming in Pensacola. Marty also did radio work while he served in the United States Air Force, despite it not being his official job.

The military sent him to Italy, although Donna remains suspicious to this day.

“He thinks he can speak Italian,” she said. “We went back over once on a trip, but his Italian was not good. He tried.”

Finding Love Over Spilled Drinks

A native of Pensacola, Marty’s down-home cadence and folksy candor made him a fan favorite of commuters, especially when he playfully sparred with sidekicks.

Davis remembers Marty’s appreciation for life at a young age. One morning she flipped on the intercom system at Tate, handed Marty the mike and let destiny take its course.

“He loved it,” Davis said. “Even then, he put so much energy into it — so much personality. You might think a young person would be bashful if you handed them a microphone, but he was very confident from the very beginning.”

Soon, Davis was recommending Marty to be the public address announcer at Tate football games every Friday night.

The rest is history.

“For a kid calling football games with so much energy, (White) stood out,” Davis said.

“It was very powerful. And he, himself, was a very driven young man. Not all kids are (driven) at that age.”

A senior, Marty called the action on the field, unbeknownst that his blissful future was on the sidelines, too.

Donna (nee Edwards) was a cheerleader, two years Marty’s junior. Love at first sight it was not.

“We didn’t hang around much together,” Donna said. “I didn’t pay much attention to him.”

A few years later at Five Flags, though, Marty took matters into his own hands. Unintentionally? You make the call.

“I was at Five Flags Speedway with some friends,” Donna continued. “He was out there, sitting behind us. He spilled a beer down my back. That was the first time I saw him after high school.”

It wouldn’t be the last.

Their first date came at a New Year’s Eve party with a bunch of couples ringing in 1984 in Navarre. Marty, perhaps with the help of some liquid courage, decided it was perfect weather for a dip in the Gulf.

If his plan was to get back to Donna’s house, it worked. Marty got pneumonia from his polar bear adventure and Donna nursed him back to health.

“He never moved out after that first date,” said Donna, who it should be noted has just as sharp a sense of humor as her husband does. “He wanted me for my washer and dryer.”

The pair married in 1987 and had their only child, son Cody, two years later.

Itchin’ to Race

After dominating the celebrity/media races in a Bomber car for a few years at Five Flags, Marty convinced Donna to let him try the real thing in 2010.

“He always teased me that he wanted to race,” Donna said. “I said whatever. He qualified for the (Sportsman Snowball) Derby one year, but it was illegal.

“After that, he started driving routinely. I wasn’t sure what he was getting us into.”

White and his trademarked No. 102.7 Sportsman, an appropriate number if you’ve ever seen one, raced for three seasons.

He won one heat race — “You would’ve thought it was a feature,” Donna joked — but it never seemed to be all about collecting checkered flags for Marty White.

“He hit the wall about 7,000 times,” Donna exaggerated. “He caught fire a bunch of times before finally realizing his time was done. But he loves it. He’d go back right now in a hard second.”

Asked if she thought Marty would consider a return for the track’s annual Demolition Derby later this summer, Donna was quick with a quip, “He’s a Demolition Derby on his own.”

How will the man fill his time without a mike in his hand or a short-track in front of his fender?

Fishing, hunting and swimming at the family camp in Florala, Ala., will fill the void. But Donna promises to keep him busy until she decides Marty don’t need no rockin’ chair, as George Jones (a Marty favorite) would say.

“I have stuff that’s just ready to be fixed around the house,” she said. “He wants to chill out, but, eventually, and he doesn’t know this yet, but I’m going to have to send him back to work.”

Perhaps Tate needs a voice for its morning announcements.

Photos courtesy Nash 102.7 for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.