- [Narrator] Funding for this program was provided by... - [Announcer] Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory, and Florist dedicated to helping you celebrate your life, or the life of a loved one for over 85 years.

Chattanooga Funeral Home believes that each funeral should be as unique and memorable as the life being honored.

- [Narrator] This program is also made possible by support from viewers like you.

Thank you!

- [Alison] This week's guest is a familiar face to the many viewers who rely on him for trusted coverage, but his path to success had to start somewhere.

- I was the low man on the totem pole 'cause I was the newbie.

And I didn't know as much as I thought I knew, but they let me know right away that I didn't know as much as I thought I knew.

But I learned one thing and something happened there that made me wanna get into television.

If I hadn't sort of volunteered for this one little assignment at this private weather service, I wouldn't be here right now.

- [Alison] Join me as I sit down with WRCB's chief meteorologist Paul Barys.

Coming up next on the AList.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm chief forecaster Paul Barys.

- [Alison] Over the last 35 years Paul Barys has been a trusted voice in the Tennessee Valley.

Since arriving at WRCB TV in 1985, he has been known for his accurate weather forecast and reliable coverage.

You've probably heard it before, Paul said it would be like this, and that reputation has been hard earned.

From sunny skies to unprecedented blizzards, to destructive tornadoes, Paul has been there through it all.

And now he's preparing for retirement after his many years of service.

Well, Paul, welcome to the AList.

- I'm glad to be here as I told you when I walked in, I'm glad I'm not on the BList.

- Never on the BList.

(Paul laughing) - And I'm just so thrilled, number one, to be in person and to be in person with you because I feel like, you are sort of have this celebrity status in this town and not just for this town, but for me personally, because I've been here, in Chattanooga since 1997 and have been a very loyal WRCB watcher and follower.

But specifically, you know, when you say what's gonna happen, I listen, right?

So after listening to you and watching you for all these years... - I've got an affidavit you can sign.

- Yeah, exactly.

I'll just join Paul Barys' fan club after I stop fan girling, just to say it really is a pleasure to be with you.

- Well, thank you.

It's very nice.

I was honored that you asked me to do this.

- Well, I have so many questions, not all weather related.

- That's okay.

- But also how you've sort of weathered your career, no pun intended, over the past many years.

I know you're about to celebrate quite a milestone and we'll get to that, but let's start at the beginning.

You're not a Southern born- - No.

- raised gentlemen.

Tell me about your childhood.

- I was raised in Illinois.

I was raised in a suburbs of Chicago in a town called Wilmette, Illinois.

And I was born in Chicago and then we moved to Wilmette and I got interested in weather when in sixth grade.

And this is pretty interesting story.

I went to Catholic school and we didn't have air conditioning at school.

And it was a hot May day.

And we used to go, for recess we would go out in the parking lot.

They had a big, huge parking lot.

And we would play out there and we had our ties on and our shirts, and our uniforms.

And it was really hot.

And for sixth graders, you don't sweat as much as you do when you get older, but we were sweating pretty well.

And the nuns were sweating too, everybody's sweating.

And we're all sitting there.

And then all of a sudden it got cool, just out of the blue.

That night I watched the weatherman on one of the TV stations who ended up being my mentor.

And he said, he explained how a cold front came in.

And he was really good at, this is before computers.

This is when they just drew a map on the wall.

And he just made it interesting.

So I started watching a lot and my mom always liked watching him too.

So I got interested in that.

Then when I was in 1965, so I was going on 14, just almost 14 years old.

We had a tornado outbreak in that area.

And not too far away from where I lived, one of my dad's friends, the roof got blown off their house.

So we went to visit that area.

And it's just like what happened in East Brainerd and what happened in 2011, we saw houses that were gone.

There was nothing left.

And the only thing I knew about tornadoes at that time was what I saw in the Wizard of Oz.

That was it.

- And that was a pretty accurate description.

- It really wasn't bad.

- It usually falls, if it falls on the woman then... - That video of tornado on there was more realistic than a lot of things I saw in Twister, the movie Twister, which is computer animated.

So I started reading everything I could about tornadoes.

And there wasn't that much.

There was very, very little because there was no video.

They had old films, but nobody could get ahold of old films.

So you had pictures, you just had pictures.

I was always wondering what it looked like.

And so I told everybody I was gonna be a meteorologist just like the fellow in Chicago.

So they said, "You gonna be a what?"

I said I'm gonna be a meteorologist.

Why would you wanna study meteors?

I said, no, no, no, that's a weatherman.

"Oh, you wanna be a weatherman!

Oh, okay.

That sounds okay."

So I ended up finding out my neighbor was a professor over at Northwestern University and he knew the meteorologists over there.

So in an open house one time, when I was going in high school, I went over there and they told me what to take.

And said, "Oh, it's simple.

Take all the math and all the science you can when you get in high school."

He said, then you gotta find a college that offers it.

So I did, and I went to Northern Illinois University, I got my degree and that was the hard part.

I thought that was the hard part.

The hard part was getting the job afterwards.

I thought I'd work for the weather service, national weather service.

- Because when you say you wanted to be a meteorologist I think we today assume that means you wanted to be on TV.

- Exactly.

- But that really wasn't your start.

- There were very few meteorologists on TV.

- Okay.

- Especially in smaller markets.

Most of the people, the anchorman would read the forecast, or they'd have an announcer who would be on the side and he'd read the forecast and he'd do commercials during the day and all that.

So there very, very few meteorologists in smaller markets.

So to get the job, I couldn't get a job with the weather service because they had a hiring freeze in 1973-74.

And I just couldn't get one.

And then I finally got one in a private weather service.

There are private weather services around and they have specific clients that get forecast for it.

And I worked there.

I was the low man on the totem pole 'cause I was the newbie.

And I didn't know as much as I thought I knew, but they let me know right away that I didn't know as much as I thought I knew.

But I learned one thing and something happened there that made me wanna get into television.

If I hadn't sort of volunteered for this one little assignment at this private weather service, I wouldn't be here right now.

I worked weekends mainly.

And our company had a deal with channel two in Chicago, which is the CBS owned station.

They hired a model to do the weather on channel two during the weekends, but she was a sweet person, but she didn't know anything about weather.

Absolutely nothing.

You know, she knows what rain is and snow is, but to put up a show together, it's pretty tough.

So they said they want our weather service to consult her before every show and none of the other guys wanted to do it, they thought it was below them to do that.

I said, I'll do it.

So I did it.

And I talked to her and I would explain to her what to say, what to do.

And I realized, I looked at one of the other fellows working there, I said, I can do that, I can do that.

And they said, "No, you couldn't."

I think I will.

- [Alison] And he certainly did.

But Paul's path to success wasn't easy.

After sending out hundreds of letters to stations around the country, he finally got hired at a little station in New Bern, North Carolina.

With no broadcast experience whatsoever, Paul learned some hard lessons on the job.

But those lessons would prepare him to make a big jump in his career.

So how long did it take you to land your job now?

- What happened was, after I left Little Washington, they call it Little Washington.

That's where I met my wife too, so in Little Washington.

And then we moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

- Hold on, we have to go back to the wife.

So did she see you on air before you met in person?

- Vaguely, 'cause I asked one of the artists at the station and it was Robin.

I said, Robin, are there any women in this town?

(both laughing) And he goes, "Yeah, I think I know someone."

And it was my wife's sister.

- Okay.

- And so I ended up getting blind date with my wife's sister.

We had a dinner and I can't remember what else, it was a dinner.

I would ask her questions, I said, do you like to do this?

And she goes, "No, no, no, but my sister does."

(Alison laughing) And I said, well, you like to bike ride?

"No, no, no, but my sister really does."

And later I found out she went back to the house and she said, "I think he is gonna be calling you."

- That's unbelievable.

- And I called her up again, I called her up one more time.

And she said, "You know, I'm sort of going with the guy," which she was, I don't even know why she went out with me in the first place.

But she said, "You can call my sister."

So I called Sarah, my wife and we went out.

Actually, when I went to the door to meet Martina, which is Sarah's sister, Sarah answered the door.

And she was in her daisy dukes, she had her granny glasses on and I said, oh, are you Martina?

And then she said, "No, no, I'm her sister.

You must be the weatherman."

(both laughing) - And the rest is history.

- And the rest is history, that's right.

We got married.

This was 75, so we ended up getting married in December of 76.

- [Alison] Wow.

- So it'd be 45 years coming up.

- So she knew what she was signing up for, with a life with meteorologists.

- She's saying, "Now I won't be a weather widow."

Because every time there's a storm, Paul is gone.

- Right.

- And so the blizzard, I went in there, the tornado outbreak, I went in there.

I said, now I'll be able to watch a snow storm.

- With you.

- With you.

We'll make snowmen and snow women together.

(Paul laughing) - So you left Little Washington.

- [Paul] Yeah, yeah.

- And then how many cities did you hit before you landed in Chattanooga?

- No we went to Fort Wayne for five years.

And then after I left Fort Wayne, I went to Cleveland, Ohio.

I got a big jump to go to Cleveland, Ohio.

And Al Roker was there.

- At the same station?

- In Cleveland, WKYC.

It was channel three in Cleveland, Ohio.

And I was the first full-time weekend guide they ever hired.

- [Alison] Wow.

- Everybody else was part-time.

This is the ninth market in the country at the time, which is surprising.

But in those days, again, computers were just coming in.

So this was the first weather computer I got to play with.

And Roker is a cartoonist, a lot of people don't realize that, but he's a cartoonist.

He made that thing just spin.

And he made it do a lot more than they ever intended it for it.

But I wasn't that type of person.

I couldn't do what he did.

And then after about a year, he left, went to New York.

And I tried to get that number one job, but they wouldn't hire me because the station was in dead last place.

And they wanted ratings, what they call it yesterday.

And they thought they had to get a funny guy, sort of like Al was.

So they hired a funny guy and I wasn't that guy.

And I stayed there for about, I stayed, I finished my three years there and then I left there and I came here and it worked out better than expected.

'Cause when I first got here, I signed a one-year contract saying, I don't think we're gonna be here that long.

I said, this is too small a market.

'Cause in my head I'm going, oh, I'm coming from the ninth market.

- And this is, to put into context, 1985, right?

- 1985, yeah.

But, you know, the one year went by like that.

Everybody seemed to like it.

We had two little girls, three and one, and everything worked out and we liked it, Loved the climate, hated the snow and it worked out.

And then channel three liked me, I liked the town and that's the goal that I never knew before.

You've got to like the town, the town has to like you, and you have to have a TV station that you enjoy working for.

- Right.

- Because if it's poor management, it really doesn't matter how much you like the town.

It's a real drag when you go to work.

And this place was not a drag.

WRCB was not a drag, it was a gift.

So worked out perfectly.

And you know, I signed a number of contracts throughout the years.

And if I stayed all the way to August this year, it would be 36 years.

- [Alison] Over that time, Paul has become a mainstay in the Tennessee Valley and a familiar voice that viewers know they can turn to.

After all, his is a career path that requires staying power to achieve success.

But in 1985, as the new guy in town, he had to work hard to build that reputation.

And it all started with that now infamous line.

- [Both] Paul said it would be like this.

- Well, I know I'll be in big trouble if I don't ask this, how did you ever coin the phrase, Paul said it would be like this?

- Well, that wasn't me.

(Alison laughing) - If you know anything about television, you know that there's nothing original.

So about a year after I'd been here, maybe a little less than a year, they were looking for a way to promote me.

They got this promotion, they stole it from Los Angeles.

There was a fellow out there who just retired, his name was Fritz, he was the weatherman at KNBC out there.

And they did a wonderful promo, and I'll never forget this promo.

This was before computers, this wasn't computer animated.

They had all these people lined up in backyards, all barbecuing.

And this guy is barbecuing, he's got rocks holding down all his barbecue equipment and himself, and they're talking about something.

And I said, oh, you're probably wondering what the weather is going to be like later today.

And then all of a sudden the wind picks up and all these people fly away.

Except the one guy who's being held down by rocks.

And he turns to the camera and says, "Fritz said it would be like this."

And we took that from that.

We didn't do, that promo, they told me, cost more than they spent the entire year in the promotion department at channel three.

(both laughing) That one promo because it's Los Angeles.

So we did some promos with little kids and people go, "Outside is gonna be like this."

And there's a little boy with a real deep Southern accent.

- Paul said, it would be like this.

- And he went, "Paul said, it would be like this."

And everybody watching, "Was that your little boy?"

I said, no, I don't have a little boy.

I said, that's not my that's not my son.

I met that little boy later on, he's a big football player.

(both laughing) That's where it came from.

It came from a consultant and we did the promo.

But it was cute in the way they did the promo, that was cute.

- And obviously memorable.

- It was memorable.

But the key is you've got to hit the storms.

- Yeah.

- Everyday things people forget.

If I said, was I right last Tuesday?

"I don't know."

But did you hit the snow storm?

"Ah, you hit the snow storm."

That's what you gotta hit.

And that's the thing that always, the pressure on me was to hit the snow storms because they don't forget snow storms here.

And when we hit the blizzard, the 93 blizzard, that was really big, that was big.

'Cause I said on the air and I don't remember saying this, but I saw the video.

They said, I said it was gonna be the worst storm in the history of Chattanooga.

And I know my news director, you know who Bill Wallace is, you know Bill.

Bill Wallace was a news director at a time.

He came running into after the show was over, "Why did you say that?

Why did you say that?

You're sticking your neck too far out."

I said, Bill, take my word for it, It's gonna be unbelievable.

- [Alison] Yeah.

- And nobody believed that, they didn't think it was possible here.

Never happened.

Blizzard warnings in Chattanooga and Atlanta?

Never happened before.

Well, we did.

- [Alison] To this day, viewers still remember that seemingly unpredictable blizzard and how Paul was right there to make sure that Tennessee Valley residents had enough time to prepare.

His predictions have remained steadfast over the years.

And he has provided a much needed voice of calm during some of the most catastrophic weather events in our region.

When has it been the hardest and not to tell the truth, but to really be that voice of honesty and reason.

When you look back on your career.

- The hardest part, there was the really the roughest part I've ever had was 2011 tornado outbreak.

'Cause I did 12 hours of what they call wall-to-wall coverage, which I've never even come close to before.

I've done two hours of wall-to-wall coverage.

And what that means is we go non-stop.

No commercials, you got severe weather, you got tornado, usually it's tornadoes, and you just talk non-stop.

And that day we did 12 hours.

And the hardest part was, this is after the sun went down, this is after the Ringgold tornado.

The Ringgold, Apison, Southern Bradley County tornado, which was an F4, which has never happened in this area before, never happened.

We knew it was bad, but I hadn't seen anything.

Remember, I hadn't even seen the clouds since I got there that morning, I was just inside the building.

So they said, "Paul, we have some video of the tornado in Ringgold."

I said, okay, let's show the video.

And when I'm doing wall-to-wall coverage I'm as easy-going as I am right now.

It's not magic, I talk to the crew, I just talk to anybody who comes up to me and says something.

I say, don't whisper, just tell me.

Because I know what the audience is going through, they're terrified, they're scared, they've never seen anything like that in this area.

And I just wanna be as totally honest with them as I can.

I said, okay, we have that video of of what happened in Ringgold, let's show that video.

He may bother me to this day.

That video was so terrifying we showed, I knew people were dying and that bothered me.

And I couldn't talk for about 30 seconds.

'Cause I feel like this, but that's the way it was.

And then you go on, but that memory still bothers me to this day.

- Do you think about the lives you saved though?

- Not at that time.

(Paul laughing) - I didn't know who died, I didn't know how many people died.

I just assumed a lot of people died because it was nothing like we've ever seen in this market.

It looked like a tornado that happened in the Great Plains, you know, those big once.

And this was a half mile wide tornado.

But just that image and that thought, you know how you go through emotional experiences.

That was emotional experience for me.

It almost was like that last Easter when we had the tornado in East Brainerd.

So those things got me.

A snow storm doesn't bother me like that because I figured you got enough time, but if there's tornado, you gotta do it.

And that's one thing I've harped on for years, and years, and years, I say, folks, you gotta have a plan.

Because there's a story, I'll tell you the story about the 2011 tornado.

There was a fellow in Apison.

He was the head of the air pollution control board at that time.

And he said he was watching me.

He called me up, let me know what happened a few days later.

He said, "We were watching you on TV and you said there's a tornado heading towards Apison and you saved our lives."

I said, what happened?

He says, "Well you said there's tornado heading towards Apison, so we got into our safe room."

They had a safe room and the tornado hit their house 30 seconds later.

It blew up the house and something fell on his wife's shoulder and broke her shoulder.

But everybody else was okay.

So he said, "You saved our lives because the house was smithereens."

So I said, well, I didn't save your life.

I was just standing on the shoulders of other people who have made the computers, who have made the radars, have done all these different things.

And those people are the ones I was standing on their shoulders and I was telling you about it.

But if you didn't do anything... You saved your family's life.

Because a lot of times people watch it, "Ah, this guy is never right."

So he did the right thing and he knew what to do before it happened.

They had practiced.

They said if ever happens is where we go.

Everybody in the family knew.

So that made me feel good.

And I still talk about it.

I'll talk that to my dying day, after I'm, you know, 95 years old.

I'll still tell people, make sure you go into the room and you know where to go right away.

- Anybody who watches you knows you're really good at your job.

- Thank you.

I'm sorry, I have a sniffle here for some reason.

- No, you're good.

But anyone who talks to you realizes you're really passionate about what you do.

Which brings up an obvious question is, so what is your forecast for retirement?

(Paul laughing) - How, how are you going to... - Sunny skies!

(both laughing) Getting the COVID shots in a couple of days.

(both laughing) - But how do you transition from something that you have done for more than half your life into, you know... - Well, that's the thing.

I was telling somebody a couple days ago.

I said, I remember when I was in my twenties, in 1974 I was 23 years old.

I remember wanting a job so bad in television, so, so bad.

Doing everything I humanly could do to get that job.

And then I got it.

And I did everything I could to keep that job for years, and years, and years, and years.

And I learned a lot just about human nature too in that job.

And now I don't need that job anymore.

So what do you do?

And my wife says, "Well, that's part of you."

All of a sudden, that part is off to the side now, but you've lived with that for 46 years.

I'm in television, 46 years in March.

And I said, that's off to the side.

And then now you just Paul.

(Paul laughing) What do you do?

That's gonna be a learning experience.

- Well, I'm not a meteorologist and I don't have radar to prove this, but my prediction is you definitely will have clear skies ahead.

- Thank you, I hope so.

And I wish you all the best and thanks for being here.

- Calm winds too.

- Yes, calm winds for sure.

- Okay.

- Thanks for everything, Paul.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Get on demand access to even more of the shows you love with WTCI Passport, an exclusive benefit for members of WTCI PBS.

Watch your favorite shows in Passport on the PBS video app, download it today.

- [Narrator] Funding for this program was provided by... - [Announcer] Chattanooga Funeral Home, Crematory and Florist dedicated to helping you celebrate your life, or the life of a loved one for over 85 years.

Chattanooga Funeral Home believes that each funeral should be as unique and memorable as the life being honored.

- [Narrator] This program is also made possible by support from viewers like you.

Thank you!