What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/1242624
8 WHAT'S UP! MAY 3-9, 2020 Rags To Riches Arkansan Bobby Bones 'doing quite well' on the airwaves JERRY McLEOD Arkansas Democrat-Gazette B y his own admission, Bobby Estell was a poor, disheveled, often hungry little boy growing up in Mountain Pine, a former sawmill town of 700 near Hot Springs. He was bullied relentlessly for the way he dressed, or because he was too quiet or smelled bad. For a while, he wore a patch over his mostly blind right eye but found that only provided more fuel for attacks. He found his only solace with his grandmother — a music leader at her church — in class, in books or listening to the radio. The story has been told before. His father abandoned the family early on, leaving Bobby's mother, who had gotten pregnant with him at 15, to raise him and his sister alone. The boy's mother was overwhelmed with her circumstances, turning to booze and drugs and long hours staring at a TV. Bobby was just a boy who came and went, dressed and fed himself and crashed on the sofa because he never had a real bedroom. Bobby Estell had to learn to find his own way, to make his own bed. Eventually, that boy grew up to take the radio name Bobby Bones, offered to him by DJ Kevin Cruise at the Hot Springs station KLAZ-FM. Cruise also gave Bobby a job as a teenager, and he continued working there while studying at Henderson State University. Getting To The Top After excelling in high school against all odds in academics, and holding his own in football and baseball at Mountain Pine High School, Bones graduated from Henderson State University in 2002 with a degree in radio and television. While in college, he worked at the campus radio station as well as the Hot Springs station on weekends, which is why he couldn't attend the school of his dreams, the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. "I'm trying so hard to get the University of Arkansas to give me an honorary doctorate," Bones jokes. "I couldn't go there; I had to work. I had the grades, I had the ACT scores, but because of my circumstances, I wasn't able to get COVER STORY Bobby Bones waltzed his way into hearts across the nation during his stint on "Dancing With the Stars." (ABC/Craig Sjodin) GO ONLINE! Bobby Bones Listen to his podcast, "BobbyCast," at iheart.com/podcast/139- bobby-cast-27722337