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Record-Setting Ron Sherman Shares Gusty Memories

2 min read

Ron Sherman had just landed a Guinness World Record for producing 3,503 TV commercials and was in a counting mode, so he faced the inevitable question:

How many times did he draw Gusty? Sherman couldn’t say. The three-decade Little Rock weatherman who transitioned into the world’s most prolific TV adman didn’t have the kind of documentation on Gusty that he had kept to satisfy the meticulous Guinness folks.

Looking at 65 much as he did when he drew the little cartoon man years ago, Sherman said that he and his team at Ron Sherman Advertising had actually produced something like 75,000 commercials — mostly selling gutters, windows, siding and the like — over 15 years. He just didn’t have the proof going back that far. Guinness settled for a year’s worth of data confirming the 3,503 commercials.

Surrounded by reporters, cameras and admirers at a celebration at his huge production center in Little Rock, Sherman offered visitors a piece of a cake featuring the Guinness logo. He was smiling, as usual, and feeling conspiratorial enough to talk about the TV weather career that launched him to becoming the home-improvement advertising king.

“Let me give you fellows some advice,” he said. “Never quit a job when you don’t have another one lined up.”

Sherman never lacked for work. He started a half-century ago as a teenage announcer making $1.25 an hour at KTMN in Trumann (Poinsett County). A nervous 15-year-old raised by an aunt and uncle in Bono, he calmed his shakes, took the mike and never looked back.

By 1970, he was predicting rain and shine on KARK, the Little Rock NBC affiliate, and in May 1975 he replaced Vic Schedler at KATV, Channel 7, the ABC outlet. There he inherited Gusty, the windblown, rain-spattered line drawing who illustrated the weather and served as a giveaway prize for children.

“Don Woods drew Gusty for decades in Tulsa at KTUL, which was a sister station of KATV,” Sherman recalled. Schedler started drawing Gusty in Little Rock in 1972, and after taking his place, Sherman drew Gusty till the fall of 1979. “They even had Gusty draw me,” Sherman said, as a farewell after he signed a five-year contract to do the weather on KARK. A soundless video Sherman kept shows an animated Gusty sketching him.

“Tom McBee [who died in 2014] followed me, and the art department drew a Gusty for him,” Sherman said. “Then Chuck Gaidica drew him for a short time, and then they retired Gusty, I think.” Gaidica is still an on-air personality at WDIV in Detroit, and was appointed last month as senior pastor of Detroit’s Metropolitan United Methodist Church.

So, calculating five drawings a week for four-plus years, that comes to something like 1,000 drawings of Gusty for Sherman. That may not sound like much for a guy who makes 6,000 commercials a year, but it adds up to a lot of memories.

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