The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 106: Keep Your Voice Down

Episode Date: August 7, 2018

All he wanted was a little peace and quiet - from himself.

This is the way I heard it. Bob had a voice like a jackhammer, and when he raised it, the recruits in the barracks at Isleson Air Force Base awakened as though a shotgun had been fired over their heads. Rise and shine, dirtbags. Everybody up. Everybody out. Let's move it. It occurred to Bob, as the young men sprang from their bunks, that he'd been yelling at recruits for as long as he'd been getting crew cuts. A master sergeant in the Air Force, his job description,

basically came down to yelling. Come on, ladies, we're not on vacation. Let's get the lead out! As the airmen prepared for another five-mile run, Bob looked through the frosted window panes of the drafty barracks and watched another sunrise light up the snow-capped mountains behind Moose Creek. The early morning rays illuminating the distant clouds, the mighty fir trees standing along the riverbank like emerald sentinels,

the massive boulder in the middle of the rushing stream where the grizzly bear now perched, waiting for the salmon on their way to spawn. As always, Bob paused to let the image burn itself into his mind's eye. Then, he did something rather unusual. He quit. At 38 years of age, the master's sergeant vowed right then and there to leave the Air Force, stop yelling, and move to Clearwater, Florida. And that is how Bob became a famous TV star.

Of course, it wasn't as easy as all that. It never is. Bob had no experience in front of the camera, so his journey to stardom came with the usual rejection and frustration. But it also came with a very lucky break when Annette Kowalski saw him perform in a workshop in Clearwater, Florida. Years later, she recounted their first meeting to a reporter at NPR. I was in a deep depression, she said, grieving the loss of my oldest son.

But watching Bob perform changed everything. It wasn't just his talent, she said. It was the way he made me feel. He just lifted my spirits and radiated a quality that I knew America was starving for. Annette wasn't an agent or a manager, but she knew talent when she saw it. So Annette proposed a business relationship. Bob agreed, and in less than a year, the retired Master Sergeant not only had a hit show, he had the number one program on the channel, and eventually a body of work that eclipsed

and unprecedented 400 episodes. And that is how Bob became a famous TV star. But of course, it wasn't as easy as all that. It never is. Annette had no experience managing talent. or selling TV shows. She had to wade through a lot of nose before finding a station manager

at a small affiliate in Virginia who was willing to put Bob on the air. But once that happened, it really was as easy as that because Annette had been right all along. Bob had a certain quality and America was starving for it. Funny thing, though,

in an interview with NPR in 2016, Twenty years after his untimely death at just 52 years of age, Annette described Bob in a way that shocked the listeners. She called him a tyrant. You don't believe me, Annette asks. Do you really think this company would be as successful as it is today if Bob hadn't insisted that everything be done his way? The reporter was speechless. I don't want to leave the impression that he was rude or nasty, she added. He wasn't, but he was very disciplined, very strict. Believe me, it was Bob's way or no way at all.

The reporter and his NPR audience were understandably surprised to hear the truth about Bob's personality off-camera. But if any of his former recruits were listening, they wouldn't have batted an eye. Oh, no, tyrant would have summed up their former boss quite nicely. But imagine their surprise back in 1982 when the man with the crew cut who used to scream at them around the clock suddenly popped up on their television screens with an afro the size of a beach ball

and started whispering about fluffy little clouds and happy little trees and friendly little boulders to help Mr. Grizzly catch his lunch in our busy little stream. That would have been confusing. And yet, That was the same man, Annette Kowalski discovered in Clearwater, Florida, giving painting lessons to strangers in a hotel conference room.

The soft-spoken art teacher, who communicated primarily with a dash of titanium white, a smidge of cadmium yellow, and a touch of Van Dyke Brown. Such was the color palette of the man who pulled Annette Kowalski from the depths of her crippling depression, the man who lost. the man who lulled millions of viewers into a hypnotic stupor every week on PBS. The master sergeant who let his hair grow long and vowed to never again raise his voice. You might not know him by name, but I bet you've seen the joy of painting, a simple little program that will live forever in reruns, thanks to the man who spent the first part of his life, screaming at thousands of recruits,

and the rest of it whispering ever so gently to millions of mesmerized viewers, the beloved artist named Bob Ross. Anyway, If you're a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility and your machinery isn't working right, Granger knows you need to understand what's wrong as soon as possible. So when a conveyor motor falters,

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