By Mike Drooger –

 Author’s note—Gay Lynn, Lindsey, and I were at Alyson’s in October admiring Mykah, the first Drooger family grandchild. Lindsey and Alyson were watching “Friends” on a TV station from who knows where. Seems every time my daughters get together, they find “Friends”, even if it’s a TV station from Turkey. They don’t need to understand the Turkish language; they have all the episodes memorized.

At one point during the marathon of “Friends” episodes that played that day, I saw the name Mark Kunerth roll by in the credits. “Kunerth? That was JoLynn Vander Lugt’s name when she moved to Edgerton,” I said. Lindsey informed me Mark Kunerth is JoLynn’s brother and he’s written some “Friends” episodes.

I thought a story about Mark Kunerth would be interesting to research. How often does a farm boy from southwest Minnesota end up writing for one of the most popular situation comedies in the history of television? JoLynn gave me her brother’s email address, I sent him some questions, and he replied. This is a compilation of information gained from the Internet and Mark’s excellent email.

 At farmboyproductions.com (a website founded by Mark Kunerth), Internet searchers can read: “Born and raised on a Minnesota corn and soybean farm, Kunerth spent his days longing for an escape from the rural glamor of shoveling hog manure, plowing cornfields, and butchering animals that would later end up on the family dinner table.  As a kid, his only reprieve was evenings in front of the television, watching his favorite movies and TV shows.

“After college, Kunerth needed an exit plan.  So, with a few hundred dollars in his pocket, he packed up whatever fit into his Mazda MX-3 and moved west to pursue a career in television.  With no prestigious film school degree and no family members in the biz, Kunerth started at the bottom; running scripts around town, fetching food for writers and actors, and spending nights writing his own material that would one day lead to his first writing job and launch his career.”

Kunerth, a 1987 graduate of Fulda High School, further explained his days on the family farm. “As a young kid with one TV in the house, we were often subjected to simply watching whatever our dad was watching. When it wasn’t a steady diet of “Gunsmoke” or farm news channels, we did watch shows like “All in the Family” and the “The Jeffersons.” Later, when there were shows like “WKRP in Cincinnati,” and when we finally got a second TV, I loved watching shows like “Moonlighting,” “Family Ties,” “Growing Pains.” But one of my favorites was probably “M*A*S*H.””

Mark Kunerth

Mark and Family

Kunerth’s first big break as a television writer was a production assistant on a show called “Boy Meets World.” “I was a production assistant, which is basically an entry-level type of job in Hollywood. A production assistant does a lot of grunt work: delivering food and scripts to the actors and writers as well as shuffling paperwork to and from studio executives.  Pretty much anything that needs to be done,” Kunerth explained.

While “Friends” is arguably the best-known sitcom for which Kunerth has written, there are others. Besides the 10 episodes he wrote for “Friends” he also wrote for “Veronica’s Closet (4 episodes), “Cursed” (4), “Rodney” (1), “The Bill Engvall Show” (5), “The Big C” (6), “The New Normal” (3), “About a Boy” (5), “Truth Be Told” (1), and “Speechless (2) for a total of 41 television episodes written by Mark Kunerth. Kunerth has also produced 10 sitcoms including “Friends” and his current project “The Conners.”

Mark Kunerth, right, on the set of the Bill Engvall Show. Engvall is on the left.

One of Kunerth’s teachers at Fulda was Loren Carlson who remembers Kunerth being “a very intelligent student who was very quick-witted.” Carlson added: “All of the Kunerth kids were great kids and great students. When Mark wrote for Friends, there would quite often be mentions of Fulda and family names in his writings of shows.  He was a special guy who would have flourished in a drama class, which we did not have unfortunately.”

When Kunerth was asked his favorite memory of his school days in Fulda, he replied, “With the help of one of my favorite teachers in high school, Gary Holden, I discovered Speech competitions and really enjoyed that quite a bit. I competed in the category of Humorous Interpretation. There weren’t a lot of creative outlets at a small school, but Speech was always something I really enjoyed.  Some might even say I was good at it.”

Gary Holden passed away in 2002, but his wife Judy still lives in Fulda. Judy was Kunerth’s kindergarten teacher as well as the speech team assistant coach. “I’m very proud of him,” Judy said when asked about her former kindergarten student and speech team member. “He was quiet and shy in kindergarten. On the speech team he was easy to coach. He listened well, was a hard worker, and very dependable. He was always on time and a very good student. He won many awards including being named an alternate to State.”

Judy also stated she remembers many of her students from more than 30 years of teaching, but especially the speech team members because they were like family. “Gary and I would get very close to them. I consider Mark to be a good friend of mine. I hear from him occasionally, usually around Christmas. Isn’t it super what he’s accomplished?”

During its 10-year run, “Friends” was nominated for 62 Primetime Emmy Awards winning six. The lowest rating “Friends” ever had was its first season when it came in at number eight. After that initial season, “Friends” was rated anywhere from first to fifth. Twice a “Friends” episode had over 52 million viewers—episodes called The One After the Super Bowl (52.9 million on 1/28/96) and The Last One (52.5 million on 5/6/04).

Because of syndication, “Friends” continues to generate approximately $1 billion each year for Warner Brothers and $20 million annually for each of the six main actors—Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc.