By Adam Kelley

Last January, GUIDING LIGHT's latest Alan, Ron Raines, accompanied Kansas-born co-star Marj Dusay (Alex) to Wichita for a personal appearance. Not surprisingly, scores of Dusay's long-lost high school and college friends made a pilgrimage to the event to lavish attention on the Kansas girl who made it big. But during the Q&A period that concluded the visit, one woman had a question for Raines.

"When you were doing that production of Oklahoma! in high school in Nacogdoches," she asked, "did you know that you were going to [be acting] the rest of your life?"

"Do I know you?" Raines asked in amazement. As it turned out, he did - sort of. She grew up near him in the East Texas college town of Nacogdoches. Decades ago, Raines played with her older brothers. The question gave him pause. "I never thought about it," Raines admits. "Was it turn, playing Curly, singing 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,' that I knew? It wasn't, but I'm sure there was a seed planted."

Quite possibly, the seeds of his ambition were sewn long before high school. "My father was a fundamentalist minister," Raines explains in a slight drawl that confirms his Southern upbringing, "and [his sermons] were very emotional, musically dramatic and charismatic. I saw some fantastic, fantastic performances. And that's kind of the way I got into the theater - by going to church."

That divine inspiration led to high school productions, voice lessons at Juilliard, and ultimately, a staggering succession of lead roles in dozens of musicals, plays and operettas. From Carousel to Kismet to Kiss Me Kate, Raines has been treading the boards on Broadway and in regional theaters across America for most of his adult life. You name it, he's appeared in it. After almost a year at GL, he still sometimes says "theater" instead of "studio."

Two decades of theater work have entrenched performing in Raines's soul. In person, he's alert and animated, punctuating every story with gestures and grimaces, bugged-out eyes and "What, me?" grins. Every stage job has served him well professionally: "The road is a place to learn. I've been able to really fall on my face, if you will." He pauses, suddenly quiet. "To really stretch and grow as an artist," he says slowly, "you have to get out there on thin ice; you have to trip and fall and pick yourself up in different kinds of roles."

As luck would have it, GL called at a time when Raines was growing weary of changing roles and living out of a suitcase. "The [gypsy lifestyle of actors] is romantic for about five years," he says, "but after a while, your priorities start to change and then you want something else. You want this thing called..." He growls the next word: "sta-bil-i-ty."

In Raines's case, sta-bil-i-ty means a chance to spend more quality time with his wife, Dona, whom he met when they were both in Washington, D.C. performing in the operetta Rose Marie in 1983, and their young daughter, Charlotte. "Our daughter [is now] 6 and I've missed three of her birthdays," he sighs. "I didn't do it by choice. I did it so we could have a life."

Surprisingly, GL is the actor's first major foray into television (a three-day stint at ONE LIFE TO LIVE notwithstanding). Though he's a daytime novice, Raines's Alan Spaulding is unforgettable: a brooding, ominous presence, sort of like the Grim Reaper in Armani. In fact, the character makes such an impression that it seems odd - blasphemous, even - when the actor arrives for the interview in jeans and a blue denim shirt that turns his eyes - which often seem so cold and dark on-screen - to a glittery, almost azure blue.

"The world of soaps is a whole new experience for me," he says. "Acting is acting, but soaps and theater are two different mediums, and [GL] is a tremendous challenge. There is a craft to soaps; the rules are different, the process is different. Coming in, I was like a fish on land, if you will. I felt very much like an apprentice."

The fast pace of daytime is one of his biggest stumbling blocks. "There's a new script - 70 to 80 pages - every day, which is like a miniseries a week. You don't get to live with the words at all. Many times I've thought, 'My God, I wish I could do that scene again, now that I understand what it meant,'" he laughs. "As Marcy Walker [Tangie] told me one time, 'Sometimes you'll leave the studio and get into a cab and then it'll hit you: Oh, that's what that was about.'"

Another thing that takes some getting used to is being recognized on the street. "It's very odd," he nods, "though not in a bad way. But people say, 'Alan!' and..." Raines looks behind him, feigning confusion. "Then it's like, 'Oh, yeah, I am Alan!" Now that his character is firmly established on the show, he gets recognized quite frequently. "The thing that's amazed me is how the soaps really cross over the boundaries of every economic and social background. That's a cliché, but it's true. I've run into [GL fans] who are lawyers, Wall Street people, housewives, the elderly, college students. It's a phenomenon."

Naturally, his family is now one of the more devout groups of GL fans. "My mother has started watching GUIDING LIGHT, and my aunts and cousins do, too. Two of my aunts were watching the day Alan was shot. My cousin walked through the door and they said, 'Come here, quick! Ronnie's been shot!'"

A satisfied grin spreads across Raines's face as he considers the implications of his new job. The folks back in Texas are transfixed by Alan's every move. He won't miss Charlotte's next birthday. He's flexing new acting muscles and is having a great time doing it. And even though he's a daytime newcomer, he always looks like he knows exactly what he's doing. Raines shrugs his shoulders, eyes wide with mock shock. "Go figure," he says.