Unforgettable Characters

During my nearly 60 years in broadcasting and advertising, I have been privileged to work with some extraordinary people. Of them, one of the most unforgettable was a radio man named Roch Ulmer.

I worked with Roch at a Kansas City radio station, KUDL. Roch was on the control board, playing the morning deejay role, I did the news during his program. In subsequent years our paths crossed on many occasions as we both continued in various aspects of broadcast advertising. Roch had no inhibitions and usually came to work wearing yellow trousers, yellow shoes, and a broad-brimmed yellow hat.

Roch was a man of small stature - I am going to guess that he was about 5'6" and weighed perhaps 150 pounds. But Roch liked to talk, and he told outlandish stories about his career in radio broadcasting. For some time I thought he was just a blowhard. It turns out that he was not.

One of Roch's favorite subjects was flying. A typical flying story was his "See The Fair From The Air" antics. During late summer in the Dakotas and Minnesota, Roch and a friend would make the rounds of county fairs. They would rent a small plane, land in a pasture adjacent to a county fairgrounds, and put up a big sign that said "See The Fair From The Air". The buddy would stay on the ground and sell tickets. Roch would take off with one or more of his customers (depending on how many seats the plane had), circle one time over the fairgrounds, then land and load the next passenger.

That was an illegal enterprise, to say the very least, and I never really believed the stories until I completed my own flying lessons and gained a private pilot's license. Roch was a diabetic and could no longer fly himself, but he was eager to get in the air. One day I offered to take Roch for a ride in a little two-place tail dragger. When we had cleared the airport and surrounding urban areas, Roch asked if he might take the controls for a few minutes. In spite of some apprehension, I agreed. It was immediately apparent that Roch was, indeed, an experienced pilot... very experienced.

In telling stories about his early radio career, Roch once told me that he had worked for radio station KSTP in St Paul. During that time, he claimed, he lived in a houseboat anchored on the Mississippi River. I didn't believe that story until years later when I was in St Paul to buy a schedule of radio spots for a client of my advertising agency. I met an older member of the KSTP staff and in the course of our conversation asked him if he had ever known a guy named Roch Ulmer. Yes, indeed, he did remember Roch, whom he described as a character. "Believe it or not", he said, "when Roch worked for us he lived in a houseboat, anchored on the Mississippi River."

In Austin, Texas, Roch got himself in a bit of trouble for riding his motorcycle up and down the steps on the front of the state capitol. Another motorcycle tale recounted his living in an apartment building that had a long hallway with rooms on either side - like a motel. Roch worked the morning shift at a radio station and left for work before 5:00 am each day. There were so many complaints about Roch roaring off on his motorcycle so early in the morning, that he was evicted. The first morning after Roch had moved his belongings from the apartment, he propped open the front door of the building and quietly pushed his motorcycle backwards to the far end of the hallway. There he started his engine, roared it a few times, then went blasting down the hallway and out the front door, never to return.

In later years, Roch worked as an announcer on commercials for various Kansas City automobile dealers. He used a sort of country accent and called himself Uncle Virgil. One of his clients was a Cadillac dealer whom Roch visited frequently in the process of preparing advertising copy. In the back of the shop, this dealer had an old Cadillac... possibly from the late 1930s. Roch loved that old Cadillac and whenever he had the time, he would look over the car, often sitting in the driver's seat and checking out the controls and instrumentation.
The dealer's sales manager noted this activity and came up with an idea... instead of paying Roch a talent fee for each commercial, he offered to give Roch the old car in return for recording a certain number of radio spots. Roch was delighted.

Shortly after he acquired the car he went for a drive out on the highway. A carload of teenage boys overtook Roch and were greatly amused at the sight of this small man in his broad-brimmed yellow hat, driving this antique car. They pulled alongside, shouting and honking, then cut sharply in front of Roch. Among his other pursuits, Roch had also been a race car driver and had no problem handling this situation.

The boys would slow down in front of Roch until he passed them. Then they would overtake him and cut him off again. This went on for several miles. Finally Roch had had enough. As the boy's car cut in front of him, Roch accelerated the old Cadillac and swerved sharply to the left. The front bumper on the Caddy (built of really heavy steel) caught the right rear fender of the boys car and badly ripped their car.

They swung sideways, blocking the road, and poured out of their car. Roch stopped, kept his seat and just cracked his window a few inches. They immediately began yelling all sorts of threats as to what they were going to do to him. Suddenly a masculine voice interrupted and said they were going to do no such thing. It was a Missouri Highway Patrol officer who had been following, unnoticed, long enough to have a clear view of what was going on.

Roch died some years ago, and few people alive today had the opportunity to know Roch as I did. I could tell many more stories about Roch, but it is sufficient to say that he was a very talented man who enjoyed life immensely. Part of Roch's pleasure came in breaking rules which he thought were, well, a bit foolish.