Fans, friends and colleagues joined the family of Pete Taylor to remember the long-time Iowa State play-by-play voice during a memorial service in Hilton Coliseum on Sunday. Taylor was in his 33rd year of calling Cyclone games when he died last week due to complications from a stroke at the age of 57. Iowa State football coach Dan McCarney says the Cyclone family has lost its best friend. McCarney says whether you came to two games or 25 years of games, you always walked away from Taylor with a smile on your face.McCarney says to honor Taylor the Cyclone football team will wear a patch with the letters “PT” during the next season. McCarney says sometimes you don’t appreciate people until they’re gone, but he says that wasn’t the case with Taylor, as he says Taylor was appreciated every day. Cyclone basketball coach Larry Eustachy says Taylor’s friendship was invaluable. He says you could be with Taylor for an hour and he would let you talk about yourself for an hour and then let you talk about yourself some more.Taylor also served as an Associate Athletic Director and was always willing to listen, according to Eustachy, even when the timing was less than ideal. Taylor’s partner on the basketball broadcasts for the past 24-seasons was former Cyclone guard Eric Heft. Taylor’s first basketball broadcast was the night Hilton Coliseum opened, and it was Heft’s first game as a Cyclone player. He says that began a friendship with Pete that lasted a lifetime, a lifetime he said was too short for Pete. Heft says Taylor viewed calling games for Iowa State as a destination rather than a stepping stone and never wanted to move on to another college or to call games for the prosA video tribute highlighted Taylor’s career and included one of his most memorable calls from the Cyclones 1992 stunning upset of seventh-ranked Nebraska.
