Latest / Legacy Stories / A Father’s Influence: Melissa DuPuy Honors Her Dad, Monty DuPuy

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A Father’s Influence: Melissa DuPuy Honors Her Dad, Monty DuPuy · Legacy Stories

• 0:09
  Welcome to the Legacy Stories podcast.
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  I'm your host, Steve Young. We created this podcast as a
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  place to celebrate special family members from our past who
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  have shaped our lives and whose legacy we carry on.
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  In each episode, we're going to visit with a guest who shares
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  the story of a remarkable person in their family tree and the
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  wisdom passed on. Coming up, we learn about a
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  person whose zest for life, curiosity, and kindness touched
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  thousands, and none more so than their own child.
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  This week I am so pleased to welcome my friend Melissa Dupuis
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  to Legacy Stories. Melissa is a multi
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  instrumentalist, producer and arranger, as well as having
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  performed with luminaries like Doc Watson and Bill Monroe.
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  And on top of everything else, she's a wonderful teacher
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  imparting the joy of music to others.
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  Well, Melissa, welcome to Legacy Stories.
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  Well, thank you so much for having me.
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  It's a pleasure to talk with you again after a while and it's
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  certainly a pleasure to do this with you.
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  Oh, thanks. Thanks.
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  It has been a joy to get to do this project and particularly to
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  get a chance to reconnect with old friends and tell great
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  stories. And before we start with who you
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  want to honor today, I'd love for our listeners to learn more
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  about you. So why don't you tell us a
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  little bit about you? Oh, my goodness.
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  You know, gosh, don't we all hate to have to talk about
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  ourselves? Well, I grew up in South
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  Carolina, where I have recently moved back.
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  And in 1982, after finishing a degree in music and a master's
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  in Appalachian music, I moved to Nashville because, frankly, I
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  didn't know what else to do. And I lived there for, gosh, 41
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  years. And you know how it is because
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  in music, you have to cobble together so many different
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  things to actually make a sustainable income.
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  And I was able to do that through teaching.
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  And I had a project studio and worked for various organizations
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  and taught at different colleges and that sort of things.
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  So, you know, really have just been a musician my whole life in
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  different ways. Yeah.
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  And it's so much fun to be able to tell our listeners that one
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  of the wonderful things you did for our family is you worked on
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  a family project of Celtic music that both you had written and I
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  had written, and that was a really fun project.
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  Yeah, that was. And then those Christmas albums
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  that we did for Living Motors for the World were just awesome,
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  and I appreciated the opportunity to do that work with
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  some really amazing musicians. That's great.
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  Well, who did you come to honor today?
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  Well, I wanted to talk some about my dad, Monte Dupuis.
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  That's who I'd like to talk to you about today.
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  Well, I look forward to hearing more about Monte, and one way to
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  start that would be to ask you to describe his early years.
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  You know, where did he grow up? What was that like, his family
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  life? Anything about his early days
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  would be fun to hear from me first.
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  You know, I'll be honest, there's a lot about his family
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  we never really knew, and he didn't either.
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  His parents we're older. When he was born, his dad was 50
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  and his mother was right around 40.
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  God bless her heart. In 1929, she had him and he was
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  born in Tampa. But no one ever knew why.
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  My dad said said, you know, by the time it occurred to me to
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  ask family questions, all those people were gone because they
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  were so much older. But his dad and mother?
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  They became home missionaries in Nelson County, Virginia, which
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  is where The Waltons was based. Wow.
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  Tell us a little bit more about what a home missionary would
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  have done back then. You know, I think they
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  established a little church there and they lived there in
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  the community and helped people with everyday life and then of
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  course, with their religious life there in the mountains.
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  Was your was your dad born yet when they did that?
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  No, he wasn't. His brother was maybe 17 years
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  older than he was and he was very young when they went there.
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  I don't believe he was born there, but was certainly a very
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  young child there. Well, you just caught my ear
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  when you said that his brother was 17 years his senior.
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  Something like that. Wow.
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  That's a very interesting age gap for two children from the
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  same family. Yeah, well, oops would be the
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  word I. Think well, one of the things
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  that I picked up on about your dad when I was doing research
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  was he marched to his own drummer.
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  And I would love for you to tell that story about when your dad
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  was a teen and went to boarding school.
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  Well, I think my grandmother sent him to the Ben Lippen
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  School in Asheville because she was concerned about him becoming
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  involved with girls. Not that my father was the
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  initiator, mind you. According to him, he was so
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  naive. He didn't understand that
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  anybody was hitting on him and everybody else saw it.
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  And so his mother sent him to Ben Lippen, and he would have
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  several stories about that. One is when he was about 14, and
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  we don't know why he peroxided his brunette hair and it came
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  out bright orange. And then he had it shaved into a
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  Mohawk and. And you know when you'd go,
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  really. And whatever year that would
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  have been, you know, And he said, yeah.
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  And he said I wasn't allowed to leave campus until it all grew
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  back out. That is a funny story.
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  Knowing my father, somebody coerced him into doing that.
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  That wouldn't have been something he would have done on
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  his own. And the other thing that he
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  talked about the time, again, he was probably 14.
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  He didn't have it all together. I think at that age they all
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  went camping and he wore pajamas and caught pneumonia.
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  Oh my goodness. Yeah, he said.
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  Well, I didn't know. Nobody told me what you're
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  supposed to wear. And I all, I knew we were just
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  going out in the woods and you know.
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  He strikes me as a bit blissfully naive in some ways as
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  he. Was he was at that age?
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  Yeah, I think so. That is so neat.
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  Well, let's let's take it forward.
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  I know you were the youngest of your siblings, and so who is
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  your dad? Through the eyes of a young
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  Melissa. When we were little.
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  My oldest sister is 7 years older and my middle sister five
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  years older, and my early memories of my dad was watching
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  him on television because he did radio, both radio and
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  television. That is so interesting.
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  In those early days when they, you know, when stations
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  transitioned over into television from radio.
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  He started at WFBC in Greenville, SC, in 1949 when he
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  was 19. And they moved those
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  personalities on camera. And so he wound up doing not
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  only radio, but he was a news director and anchor and did the
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  weather and then did a children's show.
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  About what year would they have made that move to television?
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  When was that the new thing? You know, it seems like 1951.
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  Now, I could be wrong, and I should have asked one of my
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  sisters 'cause they would know. But I remember, you know, being
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  about 3:00 and waking up in the morning.
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  And from the Kitty show, he would bring like some little
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  trinket or something, a little surprise box.
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  And I'd wake up and go, yeah, he was here.
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  But, you know, I just didn't see him.
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  My, my older sister was at a neighbor's house once.
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  And the news came on. And then she got very indignant
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  and said, what is my daddy doing on your television?
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  Those are great stories. Is there any chance that you
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  have any photography of when he was doing those kiddie shows?
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  Oh I do, I have a many photographs so though.
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  Do you mind if we put a link to those in the show notes?
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  I think would love to see that. Yeah.
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  And, you know, I know every city, every town, everyone had
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  access to those kiddie shows, you know, when we were all
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  growing up. Yeah.
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  And my dad, in his later years, he just couldn't believe that
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  people still remembered that. But, you know, we all did.
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  I mean, that was stuff that we could relate to.
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  You know, we all watched and we would all be on the show.
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  And that was just part of our lives back then growing up.
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  I bet lots of our listeners might have had experiences like
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  you and I did. I, I was on the Bozo show as a
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  little kid invited to a, a birthday party that they would
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  have all these kids shows and those were the, those were
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  interesting years and yet they were formative for young people,
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  I think. Oh, absolutely.
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  And I I try to remember how long he did his show.
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  I want to say he did it close to 30 years.
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  And let me tell you, the worst part about it for me would be
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  like, if I happened to be with a group of children, you know, he
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  would ask me and what's your name?
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  And I know I rolled my eyes. I was like, you know me.
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  You saw me at dinner last night. And then the absolute worst
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  would be when it would snow and no other children could come.
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  And guess who got to be the only child?
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  My goodness. On television, on.
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  TV. I hated it.
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  Yeah, yeah. Oh, I I bet you did.
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  Well, what were some of the fun things that you remember doing
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  with your daddy growing up? Oh, I know a lot of this in part
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  was due to the fact I was the youngest, but we did a lot of
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  things like, oh, we went fishing together because I love to fish.
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  We would do that. We later on did photography
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  together. He played at playing the violin
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  and we would often, We would often play music together and
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  for a long time we would play chess every evening and I
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  enjoyed going down to the TV and radio station because frankly, I
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  love the smell of warm tubes and old cigarette smoke.
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  Yeah, I that just paints such a vivid picture, you know, the the
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  sights, sounds and smells of a childhood, you know, and yeah,
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  but I don't know what the smell of warm tubes are.
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  Can you describe for our listeners what that would have
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  smelled like? Oh, you know you can.
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  It's almost the smell of almost something not quite burning on
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  the stove, but Dang close, you know what I'm saying?
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  And then that smell of old cigarette smoke from somebody
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  who's been smoking for the past 30 years.
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  That is what it smelled like a lot, but I and I love seeing all
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  the microphones and all of the recording equipment.
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  I just thought that was fascinating.
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  You know, in many ways your father was a person who
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  exhibited love for the arts, you know, through the medium of
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  radio, television, playing at the violin, as you say.
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  Do you feel that he was an influence in your path, being
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  one of the arts as well? Well, listen, both of my parents
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  were so encouraging with anything that I did.
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  And so absolutely they were. I have memories of when I was
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  little and we would go to the symphonies and concerts and
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  chamber music and my dad, MC Ed everything in town at that time.
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  And so we often got free tickets to everything, which was great.
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  Wow. Well, you know, it's
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  interesting. This is a unique thing for this
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  show. So far I've not spoken to anyone
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  where the person they're honoring from their family tree
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  was a local celebrity, and I'm just curious, as a child do you
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  remember being aware of the fact that he was well known and did
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  that influence him at all in any way?
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  I, I knew when I was little only because people would always want
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  to come up and talk, you know, because people felt like they
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  knew him. His radio show that he had
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  forever, and he really was in radio forever.
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  He started at 14 and he probably didn't retire until goodness,
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  maybe mid 70s, something like that in some capacity.
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  He did radio, but people would want to come up and talk because
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  they felt like they knew him. And he used to say, I think it's
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  worse being a local yokel, as he called it, because everybody
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  knows who you are. If you're out to dinner, they
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  know it's you. But but yeah, that was, I think
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  the thing that always made him personable in general was that
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  he was happy to speak with anybody.
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  He absolutely believed the best, you know, in everybody.
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  What a wonderful example. This has been such a delightful
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  visit. Melissa, I just have one last
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  question for you. If you could spend one more day
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  with your dad, what would you do?
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  Well, for one thing, I'd probably say you were right
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  about a lot of stuff and I didn't know it at the time, you
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  know, But I mean, both he and my mother knew how much I
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  appreciated what they did for me.
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  And they help support my my musical instrument Abbott and my
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  desire to do music full time. That's a true gift for sure.
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  Well, Melissa, thank you so much for taking time with me today on
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  Legacy Stories. This has been very special
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  learning about your dad. Well, thank you so much for
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  having me. It's an honor to be on your
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  program and it's a pleasure to speak about my dad.
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  OK, take care. Thanks.
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  Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode,
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  please share it with others. And now as a special bonus, here
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  is Melissa Dupuis playing a special piece of music.
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  I'll see you in my dreams. Her dad's going off the air
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  theme when he first started radio.