Former chaplain recalls his short stint as weatherman Mr. Hoopnholler on WJJY-TV
By David Blanchette
Marty Monday, the meteorological marsupial, carried the forecast in his pouch. Tadwell Tuesday bent over and the forecast was revealed under a patch in the seat of his pants. Willie Wednesday peered through a hole in the fence and saw a forecast that was placed over strategic areas of a Playboy centerfold.
Theodore Thursday gazed into his crystal ball and Filmore Friday peered through his telescope to find the forecast … and finally there was Mr. Hoopnholler, who provided the daily weather commentary.
Welcome to the world of WJJY-TV in Jacksonville and the weather forecast as delivered by full-time Illinois College Chaplain and part-time on-air celebrity Robert McClelland.
“The WJJY weather show became a very popular item in the news broadcast and as a result they would usually end the newscast with the weather,” McClelland said. “People would hang on to see what Mr. Hoopnholler was going to do and say that day.”
WJJY-TV Channel 14 broadcast from 1969 to 1971 at its Jacksonville studios where Elm City Center is currently located along West Walnut Street. The station was the ABC affiliate for the Quincy and Springfield areas and aside from network programming, WJJY also featured a local newscast anchored by Illinois College speech and debate professor Ray Ford and history professor Al Lynn.
One evening while having dinner with McClelland, who was the college’s chaplain and a theology professor, Ford and Lynn picked McClelland’s brain about how they might make the WJJY newscast more interesting.
“I said they needed a weather person who makes things more interesting with cartoons and characters that can entertain as they inform,” said McClelland, who was also a graphic artist. “Ray passed the idea along to station manager Keith Moyer, who decided to give me a shot at it.”
Long before the days of computer animation for television, McClelland created a weather forecasting character for each day of the week and produced cut-out figures whose features could move. McClelland appeared on screen for part of the weather segment and when the camera switched to one of the characters, he made the simple cutouts come to life using sticks and strings.
“I came on the air and said ‘hello, I’m Bob McClelland along with the Weatherwise Widgets, and we’re here to bring you a word on the weather,’” McClelland said. “Then I’d mention our sponsor, which at the time was Farmer’s State Bank, before I launched into the weather forecast. And this was all live television, there was no safety net.”
The WJJY-TV transmitting tower that soared above the studio was very powerful, and in the days before cable TV that tower meant that people over a wide portion of the Midwest and beyond could view the station’s programs. That meant McClelland and his characters gained a following.
“We got letters at the station addressed to Mr. Hoopnholler, so whether I was as well known as my characters is for a jury to decide,” McClelland said. “I remember one night it was my wife’s birthday and I had Mr. Hoopnholler encourage viewers to call our home phone number and wish her a happy birthday.”
“As soon as the weather forecast ended, the phone at our house started to ring and my wife Dottie, who had no idea what I had done, was inundated with callers wanting to wish Mrs. Hoopnholler a happy birthday,” recalled McClelland with a chuckle. “After a while Dottie pulled up a chair, sat by the phone, and said ‘hello, this is Mrs. Hoopnholler’ when answering the non-stop calls. The station manager told me after the show that it probably wasn’t a good idea to put our home telephone number on the screen.”
McClelland’s time at WJJY-TV was brief, as the station was only on the air for about two years. But during that time he also began a live, half-hour interview show called Questionable Matters. The Jacksonville-based show started about the same time that talk-show pioneers Dick Cavett and Phil Donahue started their own talk show careers on local Minneapolis and Chicago television stations.
“With two local colleges, two state schools and the state hospital I never lacked for interesting guests,” McClelland said. “But it was live TV, so one time when a guest got stage fright and could not speak, it was half an hour of her nodding or shaking her head to my questions.”
McClelland’s television gig was only part-time, and his primary job continued to be at Illinois College. He was born and raised in Ottawa, Illinois and attended Macalester College in Minnesota where be became acquainted with Vernon Caine, who was that school’s vice president. After graduation with a degree in religion McClelland listed Caine as a job reference. Several years later Caine, who had moved to the presidency at Illinois College, invited McClelland to become the school’s chaplain.
McClelland joined the IC community in the early 1960s and taught religion and philosophy in addition to his chaplaincy duties. McClelland said the 60s were an exciting time to be on the Jacksonville campus.
“I taught a marriage and family course where students explored their feelings during staged experiences, including role-playing where they laid on the floor with pillows and blankets,” McClelland said. “Of course when their fellow students saw them heading to class with pillows and blankets that was good PR for the course.”
McClelland’s career at Illinois College came to an abrupt end when he had a run-in with President Caine over WJJY-TV and the Illinois College professors who moonlighted there. Caine told McClelland, Ford and Lynn that the college’s board of trustees disapproved of their part-time, on-air employment. The professors talked to one of the trustees, Walter Bellatti, who denied the board felt that way and asked for proof that Caine had misrepresented the situation.
McClelland hid a tape recorder in a briefcase, met in person with Caine, and got the college president to repeat what he had told the professors earlier.
“Walter Bellatti took the recording, made a written transcript of it, and put it in front of Vernon Caine at the next board of trustees meeting,” McClelland said. “Caine was embarrassed to say the least, and he ended up firing me. The poignancy of that is that Vernon and I had been good friends.”
The television station closed about the same time McClelland was fired from Illinois College, so McClelland moved on to serve as pastor at a Galesburg church until he retired in 1979. After retirement he picked up on an old hobby and began producing original watercolor paintings. McClelland held a one-man show of his work a number of years ago at Strawn Art Gallery in Jacksonville. He never returned to his brief but interesting television career.
McClelland will always fondly remember his time before the viewers and the students during the 1960s and early 1970s in Jacksonville.
“I think it was Elie Wiesel who said ‘the sins I regret the most are the ones I didn’t commit,’” McClelland said. “Well, I have to say, I have nothing I have to regret.”
