Glover's new challenge: Radio
Job interview
Growing up, Helen Glover was frequently reprimanded in school for talking too much.
Now, as a morning talk-show host for WHJJ-AM (920), it's her job.
"I think it's hilarious I'm being paid to talk," Glover says.
Two people are largely responsible for transforming the Portsmouth resident from a civilian water survival swim instructor for the Navy into a statewide radio personality: local talk-radio queen Arlene Violet and TV reality mastermind Mark Burnett.
Burnett, producer of the CBS hit Survivor, cast Glover on Survivor: Thailand in 2002. Glover would make it all the way to the final show before being ousted by the shifty maneuverings of the ultimate winner, California used-car salesman Brian Heidik.
After Glover returned to Rhode Island, Violet heard her doing radio commentaries about Survivor, and invited her to host some substitute shifts on Violet's afternoon show on WHJJ.
Glover freely acknowledges that she'd never have the radio job if it weren't for the visibility she obtained from Survivor.
"Oh, absolutely," she says. "It's 100 percent due to Survivor, and I'm very thankful for that."
And yes, she still watches. Glover says she sees very little TV, mostly the Red Sox and the occasional Seinfeld rerun, but she never misses Survivor.
"I love to watch people interact," she said in a recent interview at her Portsmouth home. "It's like going to the zoo -- only it's people.
"And now I know what they are going through, how tough it is. It strips you down to who you really are. In that sense, there's nothing fake about it."
When Glover got back from Thailand, she said at the time she had been so hungry, "I was ready to gnaw off my own hands."
In an interview this month at the WHJJ studios, Violet said Glover was "articulate and gutsy" when she was on Survivor, and that's a good combination for any talk-show host.
For her part, Glover said Violet is a role model: "She's who I want to be someday. She just makes it look so effortless."
Glover said that for her, being on the radio is anything but effortless.
"I'm always a nervous wreck," she said. "I try to run every morning to get rid of the tension, but it doesn't work. It's a good thing that behind the microphone they can't see you shaking."
That was Thursday morning, June 8. Governor Carcieri, who had announced for reelection the day before, was due to visit the WHJJ studio.
"You're sitting next to the governor of the state, you can't sound like an idiot," Glover said.
Republican leanings
Before the governor arrived, though, Glover's callers were grilling immigrant advocate Olivia Geiger, part of a local coalition called Immigrants United. The perils of illegal immigration have been favorite topics of Glover's, and Geiger was not getting a very friendly reception from the talk-show audience.
"Look at this," said Glover's producer, Maria DeCristoforo, who works in a small room immediately behind Glover. DeCristoforo pointed to a computer screen that showed incoming calls piling up. "When you see the phones light up like this, you know it's a good topic."
Still, Carcieri was due to arrive soon. DeCristoforo typed a message that appeared on another computer screen in front of Glover: "Let's try to speed through these calls."
Just before 11 a.m., the governor arrived, accompanied by his communications director, Steve Kass, a former radio talk host himself.
Glover leans conservative, and on the air she didn't hide her admiration for Carcieri, a Republican.
"I'm convinced the state of Rhode Island is smart enough to vote you back in," she said.
"From your mouth to God's ears," the governor replied.
Glover lobbed a softball in the governor's direction, asking him to list his accomplishments and describe his plans for the future. Then she got more specific, quizzing him on the state budget and voter initiative.
When she opened the phone lines to callers, the governor spoke easily to everyone from Joe on a cell phone, who wanted to know why Carcieri authorized more slot machines at Lincoln Park, to Tim, who is considering moving his business out of state because of high costs.
(Carcieri told Joe he had inherited slot machines at Lincoln Park, which is an important source of income for the state, and he is trying to ensure that the state continues to get its money. He urged Tim not to give up on Rhode Island.)
"He's not a politician who ducks questions," Glover said after the governor had left. "He's not like some of them, who have a whole entourage of people to help answer questions."
The guest list
For the rest of her 10 a.m.-to-1 p.m. shift, Glover interviewed a terrorism expert at the Naval War College about the death of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and briefly spoke to T. Jason Smith, who wrote a book called Leaving Campus and Going to Work.
Glover said she was going to give a copy to her 22-year-old daughter, Katherine.
Directly across from Glover sat her engineer, Mark "Mountain Man" Gaudet.
Occasionally, Gaudet would hold up one finger, a signal to Glover that she should repeat the station call letters and phone number. Two fingers meant there were two minutes until the next break.
As she spoke, Glover looked at e-mails on her computer and shuffled the pile of papers in front of her.
Lurking in the back of her mind, Glover said, was the dread specter of what broadcasters call dead air, and everyone else knows as silence. Silence may be golden, but not on the radio.
"Helen is like a thoroughbred race horse who sometimes get spooked, and doesn't always recognize her own talent," Violet said.
Looking ahead
Glover, 51, originally tried out for the WHJJ job in 2004, after John DePetro left to go to WRKO in Boston. The station sampled a number of candidates, but ultimately decided to go with syndicated programming from liberal Air America.
It was a ratings disaster, and a year later WHJJ announced that Glover would take over the 10 a.m. morning talk slot. So far, the numbers have not rebounded much.
For all listeners ages 12 and over, WHJJ fell from 47,500 per week for DePetro in the summer of 2004 to 26,900 for Air America in the spring of 2005.
Listeners rose to 32,300 for the fall of 2005, when Glover started, but went back down to 26,900 for the last recorded rating period, in the winter of 2006.
WHJJ program director Bill George said the station still hasn't recovered from the Air America experience, and he's convinced Glover's ratings will start to come up.
"We believe Helen is a big part of the future for this radio station," he said. "She's been great. She and Maria [DeCristoforo] and Mountain Man are a machine. They're in here at 8 a.m. doing prep work -- Helen is very intense with her prep.
"I think her best gift is recognizing the topics people are talking about, and why it matters."
Certain topics keep coming up on Glover's show. Illegal immigration is one. Sexual predators who get out of prison is another.
"Why was this guy out? We should put creeps like this behind bars and throw away the keys!" Glover said on the air after reading a story about a registered sex offender who killed a college student.
She thinks Rep. Patrick Kennedy should resign, for his own good if nothing else, and generally supports the policies of President Bush.
Looking back
Glover was born Helen Olds in Hawaii, the middle of three siblings. Her dad was a Marine Corps officer, and she spent her childhood moving all over the country. She attended four different high schools in four years.
"My middle name was 'the new girl' " Glover said. "To go to four different high schools was tough. You didn't get the time to really know anybody, and it was almost impossible to take part in things like sports or student government."
On the other hand, said Glover, she got to see a lot of the country, experienced different cultures, and developed a knack for finding common ground with other people in a hurry.
Glover spent her junior year at Rogers High School, in Newport, while her father went to the Naval War College. She said she fell in love with Aquidnick Island, and decided that she would live there someday.
At 18, while living with her family in Virginia Beach, Va., she decided to get married.
"I got married too young. I was in too big a hurry to stop moving around," Glover said. "In retrospect, it was a very stupid thing to do."
Glover and her husband, Doug Fehmel, had a son, Matthew, and moved to Newport in January of 1978 -- just in time for the famous blizzard a month later.
The marriage broke up shortly afterward, but Glover stayed in Newport, working as a waitress and a pastry chef.
"In the summers, you can make a lot of money working as a waitress in Newport," she said. "It was definitely the job to have."
She's a Survivor
She met her second husband, Jim Glover, when they were both working at a Newport restaurant called the Spindrift. They married in 1982.
It was Jim Glover who downloaded an application for Survivor from the Internet and gave it to his wife, after hearing her claims that she could do well on the show.
Jim made a big impression when he appeared on Survivor and ate a spoonful of ants, a tarantula and a scorpion in order to win a 24-hour visit with his wife. For a while, the answering machine at the Glover home referred to him as "bug man."
(Helen Glover, who refers to her husband as "Mr. Glover" on the air, said she prefers to keep his occupation private.)
When Helen Glover applied to Survivor, she was a survival swim instructor for the Navy, a job she heard about from a Navy SEAL she met while taking a class for water safety instructors.
Glover, who said she was always an excellent swimmer, got the job and received further training from the Navy. It was a perfect fit for her, allowing her to be part of the military while still remaining a civilian.
"My father wanted me to be a Marine in the worst way, and I think I would have been a fantastic Marine officer," Glover said. "But when I was growing up, I moved every year of my life. I wanted a home town. I wanted stability for my kids."
Her son, 32-year-old Matthew Fehmel, is a Marine captain who recently returned from Iraq and is now stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. He has a 2-year-old daughter, Alison.
Glover said having a son fighting in Iraq gave her a very personal perspective on the war.
But she said she didn't really want Matthew to join the Marines.
"My dream was for my son to be an architect or a stockbroker and live down the street from me, not be on a battlefield," she said. "But I'm very proud of him."
Glover's 22-year-old daughter, Katherine Glover, graduated from Gettysburg College with a degree in religion. This summer she'll be captain of the lifeguards at Second Beach in Middletown.
It's a challenge
On the home front, Glover is used to political disagreement. She leans to the right; her husband leans to the left.
"I'm very much a liberal Democrat. She's a reactionary Republican," Jim Glover said. "But it's just politics, it's never personal. We respect each other's opinion. She's always wrong, of course."
Sometimes he'll send an e-mail to his wife during her broadcasts, reminding her of the other point of view. Glover said they don't change her mind.
Asked if she enjoys talk radio, Glover hesitates for a few moments, and then says yes, adding that she never realized how much work was involved.
She said she never thought she'd leave the Navy job she had for 17 years.
"I loved it, I loved every minute of it," she said. "It was a very frightening step for me to leave. It was like going on Survivor all over again."
But Glover said she doesn't regret the choice.
"If I had stayed with the Navy, I would have always wondered 'what if.' This is a much better job for me in terms of opportunity, it's much more of a challenge for me . . .
"I'm trying very hard to do the best I can, and I'm learning more each and every day."
asmith@projo.com / (401) 277-7262
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