David Lamm remembered as a ‘pioneer’ who helped launch sports radio in Jacksonville

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – David Lamm, a former sports editor at the Florida-Times Union who went on to help launch sports radio in Jacksonville and become one of the most prominent broadcasting voices in the area for decades, died on Friday.

His son, Alex, confirmed his father’s passing in a post on Facebook.

Lamm, 78, was an unmistakable figure in the Jacksonville media market since arriving here from North Carolina in the late 1970s. His well-known “Lamm at Large” segment matched his persona perfectly. He was hard to miss, be it his larger frame, (although he’d slimmed down considerably in recent years), deep sports knowledge and sometimes bombastic takes. He was seldom seen without his unlit cigar in hand and would always engage with people in the community. As much as Lamm could rile up listeners with takes, he had a soft and giving spot, too.

Nicknamed “Lamm Chop”, he started the David Lamm Foundation in 2002. It went on to roll out Santa Lamm, an initiative the was a Christmas drive to provide children from 3 to 13 years old a $100 gift card to go shopping during the holidays. According to the foundation, more than 4,200 children have been helped through Santa Lamm, which is now handled by Lamm’s sons, Alex and Tom, and their families. The Times-Union’s Mark Woods detailed in a 2023 column about Lamm’s inspiration for that and why it meant so much to him.

News4JAX sports analyst and 1010XL’s Frank Frangie worked with Lamm at the Times-Union and later in radio, and said that learning the business alongside Lamm remains one of his best memories. Lamm started as a sports writer at the Times-Union, later became a columnist and then sports editor.

“David Lamm was an icon. David Lamm was a pioneer. There is no sports radio in Jacksonville without David Lamm and I mean that very sincerely,” Frangie said. “Jay Solomon and David Lamm were the pioneers and I got to be the tag along back in the day. And it was of the great honors of my career. We will miss David Lamm. How authentic. How real. How he said what he believed. How he entertained. It’s a sad day in Jacksonville, the great David Lamm gone today.”

Lamm got his start in the media industry as a high schooler, getting a foot in the door charting football games for the local paper in North Carolina in 1961, according to his speakers bio. Lamm worked in that market for 16 years before coming to Jacksonville in 1977 as a writer and then as the sports editor for the Florida Times-Union. This is the area where Lamm thrived and put down roots for the rest of his professional career. When Lamm had an abrupt departure from the Times-Union in 1983 — he covered that topic and many others during a sitdown with former TV anchor Mike Lyons in 2019 — he found his true niche.

Broadcasting. He became sort of a jack of all trades, though he was still very much a journalist at his core. That also led to spots in television, both locally and on channels like the Sunshine Network.

“I was working about two-thirds as much and making twice as much,” Lamm said about the switch from print to TV and radio during that interview with Lyons.

Lamm would connect with Jay Solomon, who is regarded as the founding father of sports talk radio in Jacksonville. Solomon was the basketball play-by-play announcer for Jacksonville University and is in the school’s Hall of Fame. They helped launch the birth of sports talk radio in Jacksonville and the landscape hasn’t been the same since. Lamm said in that interview with Lyons that they launched Dec. 9, 1991, at 6 a.m. on 930 AM and sports radio here was born. While his outlets, call letters and radio channels changed over his career, Lamm was difficult to miss, be it on television, writing for the 1010XL website or talking on the radio.

“It gave the fans a voice. Up until then the only voice fans had was a letter to the editor,” Lamm said to Lyons.

Lamm fit in Jacksonville.

He and his wife, Ellen, raised their sons, Tom and Alex here. For anyone who was a fan of sports from the mid-1980s through 2015, it was impossible to not know Lamm. He could be gruff at times with certain takes, but Lamm’s knowledge was vast. His personality and easy-going ways just fit in the football-crazed South.

“I’m the luckiest guy on the face of the earth. I never planned for this but I’ve had a wonderful career. I’ve spent my life covering sports, talking about sports, writing about sports. I’ve been to multiple Super Bowls and World Series and Final Fours and US Opens and Masters. I’ve traveled places, certainly this country, that I would never have traveled to, most people don’t. … so when I look back on it I’m going ‘you lucky son of a gun,’” Lamm told Lyons. “How many people fall into something and it turns out to be the love of their life. They didn’t even know it at the time.”