Sitting patiently in his tree stand, the deer hunter spotted the big buck as it came within range. His heart pounding and his trigger finger tensing, his moment had arrived.

But the determined hunter was also a devoted fan of University of Tennessee football, and through his battery-operated radio and earbuds he was tuned in as Bob Kesling was calling a hard-fought football game.

At the instant of a stunning, upset score by Tennessee, the man became so excited he lost his balance, fell out of the tree and fractured both shoulders.

The lucky buck, presumably, got away, maybe a little amused.

After 26 years as The Voice of the Vols, Kesling retires soon as the curtain closes on the UT men’s 2025 basketball campaign.

The deer hunter anecdote of one of the humous recollections Kesling shared Thursday with a capacity audience at McMinnville Rotary’s weekly luncheon at First Presbyterian Church.

But in a career rich in exciting events and iconic personalities, the Rotary speaker made time to reach down to some of the weakest, most disadvantaged and vulnerable, those with the least chance of success in life.

“Bert Bertelkamp [Kesling’s sidekick basketball analyst for 26 years] stopped by one day and suggested we could do something to promote Big Brothers,” a long-established non-profit that organizes mentoring arrangements for at-risk youth.

Agreeing that the widely-respected humanitarian cause deserved their support, Kesling said he himself didn’t have time to commit to a mentoring relationship. But before long, he decided to try and came in contact with William Large, a Black 10-year-old living in depressed circumstances in Knoxville.

After hosting a get-acquainted dinner and few visits at UT games, those encounters blossomed into a 17-year relationship that saw Wiiliam enlist in the US Navy, rising to become a recruiter. With an assigned quota of four recruits a month, he signed up 11 in February.

As one of nine siblings—seven of them sired by different fathers—William was set up for failure, a life of desperation, dysfunction and dependency. As a caring adult, Kesling offered a model of purposeful life and responsible citizenship.

The uber-successful Navy recruiter and The voice of the Vols re-connected a couple of years ago over dinner near the San Diego Navy Base.

Sitting and looking out over the bay and the anchored ships, Wiliam revealed that he “thought you would not come back” after their initial meeting 17 years earlier.

“Why did you think that?”

“Because I was a Black kid” that didn’t have much of a shot at a future.

“I told him I didn’t see color, just a kid who needed an adult friend,” the speaker told a hushed audience at Rotary.

“Be a big brother. Mentor a kid,” he urged the Rotarians and guests.

Elsewhere in a captivating half-hour of stories, he recalled how he was reluctant—and unprepared—to compete against his brother in a Boy Scouts pinewood derby.

With no plans for building one of the gravity-powered racers and with scant materials, Kesling tried to resist the pleadings of the den mother insisting that he join in the competition.

Against all odds, and with pint-sized car still wet with gold paint, he won the initial heats. To the amazement of everyone present, his crude, hastily-built entry crossed the finish line just ahead of the most thoroughly engineered car in the contest, the one his brother brought to the derby.

The den mom “gave me that drive that you need to compete, that you need to try.”

His career from local radio in Knoxville to television to national acclaim as the masterful play-by-play announcer for UT football and basketball was a series of upward steps on a ladder, each propelled by his willingness to try.

In a standing ovation at the conclusion of his Rotary talk, the audience offered hearty commendations on Kelsing’s stellar career and congratulations on his retirement.

Kesling and the venerable Voice for the Warren County Pioneers, Jay Walker, join in a lively, half-hour conversation this week on McMinnville Public Radio 91.3-WCPI. The weekly FOCUS interview airs Tuesday and Saturday at 9 a.m. both days