Face known 'round the country: Advertising mogul Ron Sherman has come a long way

Longtime TV pitchman Ron Sherman has cranked out enough commercials to rank No. 1 in the Guinness World Records.
Longtime TV pitchman Ron Sherman has cranked out enough commercials to rank No. 1 in the Guinness World Records.

Ron Sherman and his wife, Sheila, live in a nice house in west Little Rock, but there are those who swear he lives in Atlanta.

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Guinness official Michael Empric (right) shares a laugh with Ron Sherman as friends and well-wishers look on during the certificate presentation last month.

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Democrat-Gazette file photo

Ron Sherman rehearses with Tracy Douglass as cameraman Ross Cook sets up a 1998 home improvement infomercial. The spot was one of 70,000 that Sherman estimates he has shot over his career.

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Ron Sherman chats up the crowd attending a reception prior to his Guinness World Records certificate ceremony May 3.

Or Boston. Or Seattle. Even Chicago.

The record-holding, longtime TV pitchman is practically ubiquitous thanks to the crew of 25 to 30 at Ron Sherman Advertising, his business humming along in a state-of-the-art facility just off Interstate 30 near Geyer Springs Road.

Record-holding? Last month a representative from Guinness World Records dropped by to present Sherman a certificate to make it official. The curious can look it up at guinessworldrecords.com, but here's what it says:

"The most TV commercials produced by an individual is 3,503 by Steve Jumper, aka Ron Sherman, in Little Rock, Ark., USA, on 25 February 2016. Sherman specializes in home improvement commercials, and over the course of his 30-year career he has acted as an on-camera presenter in many of them."

Lowell Steven Jumper was the name

he was born with in 1950, but the world has known him as Ron Sherman since 1969, when he adopted his professional moniker.

And 3,503 commercials may sound impressive, but they're just the tip of the teleprompter. The number only represents those exhaustively documented for the meticulous Guinness record keepers. There were many more. In 2015 alone, Sherman and his team produced 6,524 commercials that aired in 100 markets in the United States and Canada.

In his three decades in the business, Sherman estimates he has personally taped more than 70,000 TV commercials. That's how one gets to be ubiquitous.

How a skinny kid from Bono (Craighead County) got from there to No. 1 in the world is a fascinating tale steeped in the traditional Arkansas values of hard work, pluck and perseverance.

The road to a world record takes a herculean work ethic, a dash of luck, a great set of pipes, a gaggle of gushing grannies, a cartoon buddy named Gusty and -- the most important according to Sherman -- the great good fortune of meeting and marrying the right woman.

BACK TO BONO

Sherman's earliest memories begin on a farm in Bono (pronounced BEAU-no) where he was being raised by his aunt and uncle and everyone called him Steve.

When Steve was 14, his uncle had a stroke, so the family first moved eight miles down the road to Jonesboro, then shortly thereafter farther down the road to Trumann.

It was in Trumann where the road to ubiquity could have dead-ended in the produce aisle.

Sherman recalls, "I decided I was going to go to work at the Liberty [Cash] Supermarket. Everybody wanted a job sacking groceries back then, but they filled the job the day I came back to ask about it."

Fortunately, there was a Plan B.

"My brother, Sherman Jumper, was an announcer in Memphis, which was really a big deal back in those days. That was 1965 and Ray Sherman was the name he used on the radio."

So, young Steve hiked down to Trumann radio station KTMN-AM, where an announcer knew his brother and agreed to let him do an aircheck to see how he sounded: "As luck would have it, my voice when I was 15 sounded about like it does now. Not exactly, but it was pretty close."

The teen with the big voice was good enough to get a job reading copy.

"Two weeks later, the general manager fired all the [old] announcers," he says. "So, I became a full-time announcer in the summer of 1966."

Steve was just shy of his 16th birthday.

He says, "I was making $1.25 an hour and I worked 40 hours a week. I took home $42.36 cents. I bought a '55 Chevy for $200 and saved every penny I could."

Trumann couldn't hold the ambitious kid for long. In his senior year of high school, Jonesboro's KNEA-AM radio station hired him to work afternoons.

Sherman laughs and says, "You're skinny and 120 pounds and you get hired at the big Jonesboro station -- you think you've arrived!"

After graduation in 1968, Steve landed the afternoon shift playing Top 40 music at Fort Smith's KMAG-FM. The tower atop Mount Magazine carried the signal almost to Little Rock, where it was heard one day by Ted Snider, general manager of KARK-AM (the future KARN).

As luck would have it, Snider was looking to make a big format change.

Sherman recalls, "Bill Valentine and Jim Elder were doing a morning show on KARK -- big band music, Frank Sinatra, that sort of thing. And consultants wanted to get rid of all that, go adult contemporary and hire a young announcer."

So, Snider brought Steve down, put him in a booth and had him read copy.

He says, "They would bring people from all over the building to listen, and then they'd point to me -- I saw them pointing -- and say, 'It's that little skinny kid who sounds like that.' It was kind of like a freak show."

The kid with the grown-up voice was hired for the new morning drive-time shift.

But Snider was concerned that the name Steve Jumper sounded fabricated, so he asked Steve to come up with an on-air name. He went with Ron Sherman because his brother had used Ray Sherman in Memphis.

Steve Jumper was out and Ron Sherman was in.

The job, however, proved to be "a real challenge," and Sherman was on the verge of heading to another station when, once again, fate interceded. This time, it was television.

TV COMES CALLING

"As I was about to leave in 1969, [KARK-TV general manager] Bob Brown saw me and he said, 'You know, if you would get your hair styled ...'

"I didn't even know what hair styling meant at the time. My hair was kind of long. I was kind of a hippie for those days -- not a real hippie. Maybe a semi-hippie."

Around April 1970, Brown had the newly coiffed Sherman drop by the TV station to audition for the weather during Dialing for Dollars, the noon show co-hosted by Tom Bonner and Lonnie Gibbons. The tryout did not go well.

He says, "I was so nervous, and I noticed the camera guys kept waving at me. I thought they were just giving queues that I didn't really need. Finally, they went to [a commercial] and the camera guy says, 'Hey stupid, you don't have your mic on.' I just wilted.

"I was almost in tears finishing up the weather. I was stammering."

A promising TV career could have been nipped in the bud, but Sherman had made an impression on the silver-haired Dialing for Dollars audience: "As luck would have it, about 30 little ol' grandmas thought that I was cute and they felt sorry for me. Bob Brown was a sucker for letters and phone calls, so I got a chance to do the weekend weather.

"Roy Mitchell, Dave Woodman and Tom Bonner became Eyewitness News. So, I was the young Tom Bonner, so to speak." (For the record, Sherman is 12 years younger than Bonner.)

That was May 1970. Sherman was not yet 20 years old.

Sherman was hired and went to work Monday through Friday in sales at KARK, and was paid $7.50 a weathercast to do the weekend weather.

Then KARK's venerable Bob Buice retired to concentrate on radio. Sherman was once again in the right place at the right time. He began doing all the station's morning commercials during the Today show. He was paid $3.50 for each ad-lib commercial, the kind the advertisers preferred.

In 1974, Sherman moved over to KATV, Channel 7, and in 1975 he replaced Vic Schedler on the 5 and 6 p.m. weather.

"And I had to draw Gusty," he says, leaning back and arching an eyebrow, "which was an interesting experience."

THE GUSTY YEARS

The little rain-swept cartoon character was the creation of the legendary Don Woods from KATV's sister station in Tulsa. Schedler had been drawing Gusty at the end of each newscast since 1972, and Sherman was expected to continue the tradition.

Speaking of Woods, Sherman says, "He used to send me cartoons because I can draw anything that someone else draws, but I can't come up with an original idea. So, on my lunch hour I'd practice Gusty doing all these different things -- in an airplane flying in a cloud -- all that kind of stuff."

Sherman still gets asked to draw Gusty.

He stayed at Channel 7 until 1979, when he was lured back by KARK, which was then owned by Gannett Co. They offered an extremely lucrative five-year contract that included less demand on his time.

Sherman stayed at Channel 4 for five years, then Channel 7 made it worth his while to come back to do the 6 a.m. show, Daybreak. The early hours fit well with his commercial side business that was becoming increasingly important.

"When I went back to Channel 7, I said I wanted to work mornings because I can do that and then concentrate on my home-improvement stuff the rest of the day."

ENTER SHEILA

Ron and Sheila (who goes by Jumper) married in 1981 and founded Ron Sherman Advertising in 1986.

"Sheila has been with me every step of the way in this," he says. "She has built the business and taken care of all the good days and bad days in accounting, and managed the money."

Weekends in the early years, however, were hectic.

"I got so good at doing live commercials in movie slots on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, that Sheila and I were booked up every weekend. And at first we were driving."

Sherman tells the tale of a typical weekend that took them to Alabama, Mississippi, New Orleans and Texas before heading home Sunday night to rest up for Daybreak on Monday morning

"I did something similar to that 40 to 42 weekends a year from 1984 to 1991. Our son, Ron [Ron Sherman Jumper], lived in the back of the van, and we'd watch movies while Sheila drove us all over the country like a gypsy.

"People felt sorry for me, but that's how we made enough money to first buy a [production studio] in Sherwood, and then this place, which was Sheila's idea."

Sherman swept his arm to indicate the former United Artists Theater that Sheila remodeled and transformed into a 20,000-square-foot facility.

FINDING A NICHE

Sherman notes the home improvement business "really took off" in 1994, so he left KATV to concentrate on his agency.

Channel 7 general manager Dale Nicholson did manage to talk Sherman back to Daybreak one last time for about a year and a half, but eventually taped commercials replaced live infomercials and the Ron Sherman Agency became full time.

It was also a growing family affair with the addition of his daughter, Dianna Stockdale, and grown-up son Ron.

The rest has now become Guinness World Records history.

"In Portland, Ore., I have an 85 percent name recognition as the LeafGuard person. And I was in Portsmith, N.H., getting reservations for dinner when this lady from Boston heard my voice and said, '"You're the LeafGuard guy from Boston!"'

When Sherman flies into Indianapolis, folks at the airport ask him about his windows, and he once ran into a fellow in Washington who said he'd seen Sherman on TV in Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta.

He says, "I'm probably in 70 markets and the other talent are probably in another 50."

Among those working with Sherman as independent contractors are John Lee, Tracy Douglass, Ashley King from radio station KSSN-FM, 97.7, Lisa Fischer from KURB-FM, B98.5, and Chris Kane from KATV.

Finally, the world record is nice, but the 65-year-old Sherman says, "The secret to our success is Sheila's been good at paying off expenses, and I don't owe anybody a dime. If you're sound and solid and provide a good product with repeat customers, then everything takes care of itself.

"We treat people the same -- in Arkansas, in Illinois, in Florida -- like they're right here in our neighborhood."

It doesn't hurt that folks all across the country believe Sherman lives in their neighborhood.

Style on 06/21/2016

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