The Bug That Bit Him

Tom Jolls told the story of how it all started the same way every time, and it always began in the same place: a two-room country school in Newfane, New York, where a first-grader stood up in front of his classmates and recited "The Night Before Christmas" from memory. Not read it. Memorized it.

"That kind of bit me," he said in a 2018 interview with WKBW. "It was a bug that kind of bit me, I guess."

After the school burned down, young Tom was sent into the city and enrolled at North Park Junior High in Lockport. He found his way to the PA system, and then to the radio station being built across the field from the school. He used to sit in the classroom and look out the window at it. Every Thursday, he and other students would walk over and do a live broadcast. He got to know the people there. When he graduated, there was an opening. He started as a music librarian on weekends and eventually got on the air.

It was a 250-watt station. You never really knew how many people were listening. But Tom Jolls learned something in those years that would serve him for the rest of his career: how to talk to people he couldn't see. How to make a one-sided conversation feel like company.

Carl Erickson Walks Through a Door

Tom Jolls had spent years at WUSJ in Lockport, working his way from music librarian to morning man. WBEN was the big one, the station you could hear all over Western New York. He never really imagined he'd work there.

One day he had just finished the noon newscast and walked out of the studio. Into the station came a gentleman by the name of Carl Erickson. Carl said: Tom, I've been listening to you, and I'm wondering if you'd like to work at WBEN.

"I said what?" Jolls recalled. "What? Of course, WBEN was the station that I had always dreamed about."

He was hired. He started in radio, then won the audition for the show reporter position, doing the 11 o'clock news. Weather came alongside it. When Channel 7 came calling in 1965, he was ready.

Lyle Cook's Idea

It was December of 1965. The program director at Channel 7, Lyle Cook, came to Tom Jolls with a proposition. Channel 7 was going to fill its afternoon slot. They'd run two half-hour Supermans. And Tom Jolls was going to be Commander Tom, in a military uniform.

"If it hadn't been for him," Jolls said of Cook, "I probably would never have dreamed I would be doing a children's show in addition to the weather."

The Commander Tom Show premiered on December 20, 1965. Tom Jolls and his wife Janice built the puppets themselves from their children's stuffed animals. His daughter never forgave him for taking Dustmop. He remembered the name from a dog in his childhood and thought it fit perfectly. Dustmop became the faithful watchdog of Central Command, elderly and with failing eyesight but brave. Matty the Mod was an energetic, cap-wearing alligator who was enthusiastic in the most endearing, dim-witted way. Cecily Fripple was a sensitive grand dame always trying to recapture her glorious past. Jolls voiced all of them himself, solo, while simultaneously hosting the show live.

For years, people who grew up watching told him they had no idea that Commander Tom also did the weather until someone told them when they were older. The two worlds were so separate in children's minds that the same man in a red jacket in the afternoon and the weatherman at 11 o'clock at night were simply different people.

The bright red jacket started as a response to Channel 7 going to color television. They needed something vibrant on screen. A Canadian Mountie-style uniform was the answer, and it became one of the most recognizable pieces of clothing in the history of Western New York television. He took the show on the road too, visiting schools and community events all over Western New York and into Canada, where Channel 7 had a devoted audience.

Number Four in a Three-Station Market

When Tom Jolls joined Irv Weinstein and Rick Azar at Channel 7 in 1965, the station's ratings were, by any measure, terrible. Irv Weinstein liked to say they were number four in a three-station market. That was not far from the truth.

What turned it around was energy, presence, and a format built around the idea that the news team was everywhere. But Tom Jolls was honest about who the engine was.

"I would have to say honestly it was Irv. Irv made the difference. Irv was the glue that held everything together. He was the focal point."

Irv Weinstein had a gift no one could teach: the kicker. Tom Jolls remembered one night standing outside in a blinding snowstorm doing a live commercial for Wonder Bread, holding a loaf of bread, reading off the prompter while the snow came down so hard you could barely see him. When they cut back to Irv in the studio, Irv ended the newscast by saying: if there's anything funnier than seeing a grown man doing a commercial for bread in a blinding snowstorm, I don't know what it would be.

Jolls described himself as lucky to have been part of that trio. That kind of humility was not false modesty. It was the same quality that made people trust him in the first place.

The Weather Outside

A sponsor at Channel 7 had seen weather done outside in another market and told the station: if I'm going to sponsor this, I want it done outside. That was the origin of one of the most beloved features in Buffalo television history. Not a network mandate. A sponsor's request.

"It was fun because I knew that people were watching and they were feeling sorry for me," Jolls said. "And I knew it was only two and a half, three minutes, and I'd be out there, do it, and back inside. The worse the weather, the more people watched. It just fell in place. It was neat."

Originally done from the sidewalk on Main Street, the Weather Outside eventually moved to the station's parking lot. One night a figure came toward Jolls in the parking lot without any clothes on. At the exact moment the camera cut back inside to local temperatures, the streaker ran past, never made it on air, and was apprehended by station security. The man sat at the security desk afterward, shivering, saying he was supposed to get ten dollars for it from his buddy but wouldn't get it now because he wasn't on the air.

Another night, Jolls's car alarm went off while he was live on the weather. He kept going.

In the early 1990s, Channel 7 acquired a satellite newsgathering truck, and the Weather Outside could go anywhere. In one early satellite broadcast from Ellicottville, a man on roller-skis came down the sidewalk behind Jolls and passed within a foot of him on live television. Jolls never broke stride.

Irv, Rick and Tom

The anchor team of Irv Weinstein, Rick Azar, and Tom Jolls is the longest running anchor team in the history of American television. They held that desk at WKBW for 24 years, from 1965 until Rick Azar retired in 1989.

"We were friends. It wasn't an act. We respected each other's work, and we had a lot of fun. I think the audience could sense that we actually liked being there together. It was a special time in Buffalo television that I don't think you'll see the likes of again."

Any of the three could have moved to a bigger market over the years. None of them did. They chose Buffalo, over and over again, and the audience felt it.

"We had established ourselves as family," Jolls said. "We became a part of not only our family on the air but we became a part of hundreds of thousands of people in the audience."

It's 11 O'Clock

The line was Lyle Cook's idea. At the end of the 11 o'clock news, remind people that it was 11 o'clock and ask whether they knew where their children were. Simple and direct.

Tom Jolls did it live every single night for decades. He never pre-recorded it. He tried to change it slightly each time so it didn't come off exactly the same way twice. He believed it served a genuine purpose, that somewhere out there it caused at least one parent on at least one night to get up and go make sure their child was home.

Wherever Tom Jolls went after he retired, people still called out the line to him. He said he loved it. Just really neat, he said.

The Same Guy

Tom Jolls was a shy and private man off the air. Andy Parker, the meteorologist who cold-called Channel 7 in the early 1990s and had Tom Jolls himself answer the phone, worked alongside Jolls until his retirement in 1999. Parker described sitting with him in the weather center after the broadcast: feet up on the desk, watching The Golden Girls. That was Tom. He was that way all the time.

Jolls had a simple, non-negotiable philosophy about fame. He had seen too many celebrities brush people off, and to him that was a no-no. You had to be the same guy they saw on TV.

He had six children, including a set of twin boys, and the family did a lot of camping when the kids were young. The twins used to get frustrated when strangers kept coming up to their father at the campsite. One time when the boys were three or four, someone asked what their last name was. The twins said nothing. They didn't want any part of it. Jolls laughed about it for years.

He and his wife Janice were married for 68 years. A colleague once described taking Tom and Janice to a parade in Wellsville. When they arrived it was bedlam. People wanted to touch him, get pictures, get autographs. Tom was so nice, the colleague said. He appreciated all of it.

When Tom Jolls said he was the luckiest guy in the world, he was not performing humility. He had spent his career doing exactly what he had dreamed of doing as a teenager in Lockport, staring out that classroom window at a radio station across the field. He got the job. He kept it for 34 years. He worked with people he genuinely loved.

"If I have been able to instill in any person a bit of joy, a bit of entertainment, a bit of knowledge," he said, "I feel as though I'm the luckiest guy in the world."

The Last of the Three

Rick Azar retired in 1989. Irv Weinstein retired on December 31, 1998. Tom Jolls left the air on June 30, 1999, at the age of 65.

In October 2019, he was inducted into the New York State Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Fourteen members of his family, including his wife Janice and all six of their children, traveled to New York City to watch it happen.

Irv Weinstein died in 2017. Rick Azar died in 2021. Tom Jolls was the last of the three.

He died on June 7, 2023, at Buffalo Hospice in Cheektowaga, at the age of 89, surrounded by his family. His family's statement ended the only way it could have: "He will always be Our Commander. To all his family, friends and fans, he would hope you all make your lives salubrious."

If you visit the Anchor Bar or Chef's or any of the old Buffalo dining landmarks, you can still find portraits of Irv, Rick and Tom on the walls. The theme song still plays in people's heads at 11 o'clock. And somewhere in a house in Western New York, a grown adult with grey hair is telling their kid about a man in a red jacket who had a dog puppet named Dustmop, and who asked every night if you knew where your children were.