Two Great Locations 2511Roosevelt Hwy in College Park and 1600 Browns Bridge Rd in Gainesville

http://www.legacy.com/atlanta/GB/GuestbookView.aspx?PersonId=1834170 January 21, 2004 changed all of our lives that work at Gallery Furniture. We lost our boss, friend and father all in the same day. As sad as we all were, we were also grateful for the legacy that he left to us all. With hard work and the great customers we have been blessed with we hope to continue to do business in Atlanta and Gainesville for at least another 30 years! Thank you for visiting askforthewolfman.com. And, thank you daddy! JIM GALLOWAY                                                                                                                                                        Our Cobb Bureau Chief                                                                                                                                                 e-mail: jgalloway@ajc.com Merchant parlays facial hair into Wolfman schtick             A bit more than 20 years ago, off Roosevelt Hwy. in College Park, there was a furniture store owner with a good life.             One day he called his wife from a pay phone at the airport. He told her where the car was, and said she and the kids were welcome to come get it. Then he hopped a plane and disappear.            The furniture store was sold, but the new owner failed. Then it was sold again, to yet another furniture man, Doyle Rodgers of Smyrna.             So it was that a  piece of Atlanta television history had its origins in a mid-life crisis. Rodgers, you see, has a well-brushed head of hair and an immaculate, full beard. He's not Santa Claus. He's the Wolfman. As in the Wolfman and Donna. As in, ?And, hey, ask for the Wolfman.  Let me go out on limb here. I'll wager that Doyle Rodgers is the most recognizable face on local TV. As the Wolfman and Donna, he and his daughter peer into your living room as many as 30 times a day, every day.            His screen presence is stilted, deliberately so. And his commercials are cheap, deliberately so. But like the drip, drip, drip of water on a rock, since 1980 the Wolfman has been drilling a hole into your TV set. We were sitting at his favorite restaurant on Virginia Avenue last week, after he'd hugged an entire shift of waitresses. He wore a mauve suit and a black silk shirt. His heavy jewelry said he might be brash. It lied.           Becoming the Wolfman was a matter of luck, he insisted. A matter of  luck, of good hair, and of the Ted Turner. We know about Ted's quest for nobility,                                                                                                                              fighting polio and whatnot. But Ted is also responsible for many of our guilty pleasures.                                                                                                                Wrestling is one. The Wolfman is another. For more than 40 years, Doyle Rodgers was just Doyle Rodgers, husband of Betty and owner of a modest house off Concord Road in Smyrna.

Then he bought the Gallery Furniture store in College Park and decided to explore TV advertising. Rodgers? was a down scale establishment, offering loveseats to the working man. He couldn't afford the big three TV stations.            So he put in a call to Turner's then struggling Superstation, and a sales rep hustled over. You need a schtick, the salesman advised. Rodgers had begun to let his beard grow out a while before. He was a hairy man.            "You kind of look like the Wolfman," the salesman said. The California DJ, not Lon Chaney, Jr. With that first commercial, Doyle Rodgers the Furniture Man disappeared, replaced by the Wolfman. The store on Roosevelt Hwy had swallowed another identity. Business was dicey the first years, and Turner carried the Wolfman when he couldn't pay. Then came the registered letter from Wolfman Jack, the DJ, claiming trademark infringement. It was a challenge to the new national reach of Turner's Superstation. Our Wolfman was buying air at midnight rates. But on the West Coast, our Wolfman was prime time. Turner called his biggest local advertiser into his office, rounded up  some lawyers, and saved the day. The Wolfman and Ted don't hang anymore. When WTBS got too big, Wolfman  began underwriting other, smaller TV stations What I like about the Wolfman is his utter consistency. Metro Atlanta can change as quickly as Monica's hair. But the Wolfman has resisted every effort to meddle with his own success.  He brought his daughter into the commercials 16 years ago. That was the last big revision. (Donna Anderson is now 31 and runs the family's Gainesville operation.)          The Wolfman is now 63. After two decades on TV, he could have made himself smoother, worked on his delivery. But there'd be no point. "I don't want to be polished," he said. "My customers don't want polished people. They don't buy from polished people."  The Wolfman still lives in the same house in Smyrna. Betty is still his wife. On the tube, the message has been the same for nearly 20 years. There are comforts in reruns

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