Bob Perrone and nolefan.org
By Jim Joanos
You were at lunch with some folks and someone asks, “Has FSU ever played Sewanee in football? In a few moments you respond, “Yes, in 1949 at Sewanee, FSU beat Sewanee 6-0. FSU’s Wyatt Parish’s 12-yard touchdown run was the only scoring in the game.” Perhaps on a different day, you meet a guy named “Harvey Sweeney” that someone told you had played baseball at FSU in the 1950’s when Danny Litwhiler was the head coach. You checked it out and responded, “Yes, Harvey Sweeney played for the Seminoles in 1954, 55 & 56.”
How is this possible? It is possible because a guy named “Bob Perrone” has provided FSU with the best school sports history resource of any college program anywhere. Push “nolefan.org” and your computer takes you to a web site that will answer your questions about just about everything that you might wish to know about FSU sports’ history. The information is divided among the following topics: The Athletes, The Coaches, The Teams, The Photos, The Hall of Fame, The Champions Beyond the Game, The Media, Miscellaneous, The Articles, and The Opponents. It is easy to use.
Robert Perrone, from Naples, Florida, a high jumper on the track team, attended FSU four years, 1971-75. He was not one of the team’s stars but managed to pick up a few valuable points to help the cause. At FSU he majored in accounting and took several computer courses which ended up helping him prepare for his career. His willingness to take on the challenge of large projects and logically develop them has made him successful in life and a most valuable member of committees and programming teams over the years.
In June, 1980, he met Jeanne Cloud in Tallahassee and five months later they were married, they have two grown children, Katie and Rob, and two grandchildren, Jackson and Julia, that they visit often. For 30 years, while he and Jeanne lived in Jacksonville, he served as an IT Specialist for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), primarily for the Jacksonville Field Office, but toward the end of his career he was a member of a programming team that supported all of HUD.
While working there, in 1999, he started nolefan.org. His goal has been to assemble the basic information for every single FSU team, coach and player and their basic performances while at FSU throughout the years. It has required thousands of hours of traveling back and forth from Jacksonville to Tallahassee searching FSU files and other sources for needed information. The task has included special emphasis on obtaining information on women’s athletics as it was lacking considerably when he started.
Although he has retired from his federal position, he has not slowed down a bit. After he and Jeanne moved to Chapel Hill, N. C. for a short period of time, they recently moved back to Tallahassee. One reason for that move was to be closer to the family, but an additional reason was so that the couple could participate in more FSU activities. In addition to keeping nolefan.org up to date Bob is a valuable member of the Athletics Hall of Fame Committee as its Historian. Bob and Jeanne attend virtually all of FSU athletic contests.
Deservedly, Bob has received several awards from the university. The Alumni Association inducted him into its Circle of Gold in 2015. In 2018, he was honored as the Moore-Stone Award recipient which included membership in FSU’s Athletic Hall of Fame. His Moore-Stone Award recitation states that in “over 70 years of FSU Athletics, no volunteer has devoted more time and effort to preserve our history than Bob Perrone.”
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About the author:
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Jim Joanos |
Memories of Garnet and Gold
Jim Joanos and his wife Betty Lou have deep roots at Florida State University. Avid sports fans, they have literally seen, and done, it all. Fortunately for us, Jim loves telling first-hand accounts dating back to FSU’s first football game, a 1947 clash with the Stetson Hatters on Centennial Field, where Cascades Park is today.
The Osceola will run a series of these colorful stories written by the former Tallahassee lawyer and judge, which we feel our readers will find enlightening and/or nostalgic.
Jim and Betty Lou, who was Associate Director of the FSU Alumni Association (1991-2003), have been married 66 years and are each listed as one of FSU’s 100 Distinguished Graduates. The couple were enshrined in the FSU Hall of Fame in 2015 as Moore-Stone Award Recipients. Ironically, both Deans Moore and Stone were instrumental in the Joanoses career development.
“Both Jim and Betty Lou Joanos have been exemplary fans and supporters of Florida State University, both academically and athletically,” said Andy Miller, retired President and CEO of Seminole Boosters, Inc. “You can’t go to an athletic event of any kind that you don’t see both Jim and Betty Lou Joanos together. They love their university as much as they love each other.”