Autopsy Planned for TV Pitchman Billy Mays

Sarah Ellerstein worked closely with Mays when she was a buyer for the Home Shopping Network in the 1990s and he was pitching Orange Glo products.

FILE - In this Dec. 6, 2002 file photo,TV pitchman Billy Mays poses with some of his cleaning...

FILE - In this Dec. 6, 2002 file photo,TV pitchman Billy Mays poses with some of his cleaning products at his Palm Harbor, Fla., home. Tampa police say Mays, the television pitchman known for his boisterous hawking of products such as Orange Glo and OxiClean, has died. He was 50. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara, File)

(AP)

"Billy was such a sweet guy, very lovable, very nice, always smiling, just a great, great guy," she said, adding that Mays met his future wife at the network. "Everybody thinks because he's loud and boisterous on the air that that's the way he is, but I always found him to be a quiet, down-to-earth person."

His ubiquitousness and thumbs-up, in-your-face pitches won Mays plenty of fans for his commercials on a wide variety of products. People lined up at his personal appearances for autographed color glossies, and strangers stopped him in airports to chat about the products.

"I enjoy what I do," Mays told The Associated Press in a 2002 interview. "I think it shows."

Mays liked to tell the story of giving bottles of OxiClean to the 300 guests at his wedding, and doing his ad spiel ("powered by the air we breathe!") on the dance floor at the reception. Visitors to his house typically got bottles of cleaner and housekeeping tips.

His former wife, Dolores "Dee Dee" Mays, of McKees Rocks, recalled that the first product he sold was the Wash-matik, a device for pumping water from a bucket to wash cars.

"I knew him since he was 15, and I always knew he had it in him," she said of Mays' success. "He'll live on forever because he always had the biggest heart in the world. He loved his friends and family and would do anything for them. He was a generous soul and a great father."

Besides his wife, Mays is survived by a 3-year-old daughter and a stepson in his 20s, police said.

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Associated Press Writer Sarah Larimer in Miami and Ron Todt in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

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