Public address announcer Lou Nolan’s voice has remained the one constant for the Flyers over the past 50 years

When Ellen Schwam first agreed to go out with Lou Nolan after he asked her to lunch in an elevator, she thought the date went well. Then, he didn’t call her for two weeks. “I was busy!” Lou insists to this day.

Eventually, they went out again, and Nolan invited Ellen to a Flyers game. Although she didn’t know anything about hockey, she agreed to go. The two of them got there early and hung out. Then Nolan took her to a seat, handed her a program and said, “Have fun!

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He walked away, leaving Ellen extremely confused. Suddenly, she saw him walking across the ice to the penalty box and then heard his voice ring through the arena. Apparently, Nolan was the Flyers’ public address announcer, and he had disappeared for two weeks to work the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Ellen had no idea what she had gotten herself into.

“He wasn’t this big celebrity then,” Ellen recalled with a laugh.

Now she and Lou, who became her husband, can’t walk through the grocery store without someone saying they recognize his voice.

Lou and Ellen would say he really started to gain notoriety in recent years — Lou attributes that to when electric company PECO started sponsoring the power play, leading to his “PECO power play” call.

It doesn’t surprise Nolan, 76, that he’s gained attention. He’s realized for a while now that he’s had an impressively long career with the Flyers. Never was that more evident than when he recently sat with other Flyers employees and watched a documentary in which he was featured.

Yet, when the Flyers held Lou Nolan night on April 9, when they celebrated his career, wore practice jerseys with his name and presented him with gifts before the team’s game against the Anaheim Ducks, Nolan was shocked and honored. He made sure to attribute his success to the late Gene Hart, the broadcast voice of the Flyers for 29 years from the team’s inception until 1995.

Lauren Hart, Gene’s daughter and the Flyers’ national anthem singer, isn’t surprised Nolan got along so well with her dad. She remembers growing up and thinking Nolan was one of her dad’s cool friends. Now, it’s surreal that Lauren and Lou are friends and peers as the two prominent voices at Flyers games.

Gene Hart always told Lauren that players, coaches and management come and go, but that he was one of the faces that always remained the same in the organization. Nolan, who moved from the team’s public relations department to PA announcer in 1972, has become that person.

“I wasn’t always right. But I was right enough of the time that I got to do a second game,” said Nolan. “I did the first game and my big goal was to be able to do a second game. And it worked. So here I am, 50 years later, still figuring out if I’m doing it right or not.”

Former Flyer Brad Marsh remembers seeing and hearing Nolan when he was traded to the Flyers during the 1981-82 season. Then he was traded and came back as a visiting player, and Nolan was still there. He retired from playing, but Nolan remained. He returned to work with the Flyers Alumni — “Lou’s still there.”

Nolan has become “synonymous” with the Flyers, former Flyer and now assistant coach Nick Schultz said. He’s the only person who has been with the team since it was born in 1967-68, and he’s been in the box for the last 50 years. From the Spectrum to the Wells Fargo Center, from Bobby Clarke to Claude Giroux, the sights, sounds and smells may have changed, but Nolan’s voice has not.

Lauren Hart marvels over the fact that Nolan’s voice continues to remain just as vibrant, rich and full as ever.

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“Nobody does much of anything for 50 years,” she said. “The fact that he’s done that gig, that he still has the same amount of joy and the same happiness in his voice and in his attitude is just remarkable.”

Nolan always tries to keep it professional — he firmly believes that opposing players who score deserve to be celebrated as much as Flyers who score — and with the way the game and arena presentation has changed, there aren’t many opportunities for fans to get a sense of his personality and humor.

“It’s just a matter of continuing to be professional and understanding you need to bring an even keel to the public,” said Nolan.

But Nolan makes sure he’s at as many Flyers community events as possible, Marsh said. Once, when the Flyers Warriors were missing an anthem singer ahead of their game, Nolan stepped in and sang the song, causing the players to laugh before they joined in.

“I think that’s what’s helped raise his notoriety in town because he doesn’t rest his laurels on his PA work,” Marsh said.

Between his character, his voice and his longevity, Nolan has become famous across the NHL. Marsh said it’s always a cool moment as a player when you hear a legendary voice like Nolan’s announce your name in the starting lineup or call you out as a goal scorer. Giroux said Nolan announced so many of his goals, assists and wins that it just became part of the experience, and he barely noticed Nolan’s voice anymore — unless he wasn’t there.

“I can still hear him say his PECO power play before I go to bed sometimes,” Giroux said. “So you know he’s touched me a lot.”

Interim coach Mike Yeo joked that he was scared to hear the PECO power play call this season because the team’s power play was so bad. And the team certainly didn’t hear many wins announced.

Nolan has seen some bad teams, but this season, with multiple losing streaks, including a record 13-game skid (“How the hell do you do that?” Nolan asks), ranks among the worst.

“I don’t know if I’ve seen the injuries as bad as this. But I’ve seen some bad teams,” said Nolan. “And it’s unfortunate because you know, we’ve got fans here who are the best, just the best. And they really deserve to have a better team than this.”

But Nolan firmly believes the Flyers, helped by the young college players he was impressed by late in the season, can turn it around. Nolan’s constant positivity is incredibly important to an organization, Hart said. Teams are bound to have ups and downs throughout an 82-game season. When you have someone like Nolan around through it all, it helps hold the Flyers community together through the good and the bad.

“It’s those kinds of consistencies that still keep fans together,” Hart said. “Because there’s something invested in it, and there’s something that they feel part of.”

Nolan said he’s worked extremely hard to make sure he’s there every game, although his love of hockey makes it easy for him to arrive with a smile on his face. He’s been there to announce the majority of the games over his 50 years as the PA announcer. He’s got 55 years as a Flyers employee under his belt, and he has no plans to call it quits any time soon.

“I feel pretty good,” he said with a grin. “I started when I was 2, so I’m not that old.”