Thirty One Years Ago Tonight…

It was one of the most remarkable weeks of my life. My very first week doing weather on TV in Birmingham at the ripe old age of 23, which just happened to coincide with a major hurricane scoring a direct hit on the Alabama Gulf Coast.

Here is my career up until that week….

1973-1978: Worked for the BIG 1230, WTBC in Tuscaloosa during high school and college days. Mostly playing rock and roll music on the radio, but also doing weather reporting during some of the most incredible events in our state’s history, including the Superoutbreak of tornadoes April 3-4, 1974. Everything from the Bee Gees to Led Zepplin to Earth Wind, and Fire. What a diverse mix of music that was called “Top 40” at the time. And, what a series of weather events.

1978: I was offered a position at WCFT-TV, Channel 33, in Tuscaloosa. Mostly being the news anchor at 6 and 10, but also getting to do a little weather. After five years of radio, I thought I would dip my toe in TV since the weather bug was seriously biting. I worked there from June until October. A brief stint, but a very important step in my path. Funny that I am now doing the weather on that very same station all these years later, which is the “33” part of ABC 33/40.

1978-1979: I was offered a position at WSFA-TV, Channel 12, in Montgomery. Couldn’t pass it up. An incredibly strong news organization, with the “world’s greatest weatherman”, Dan Atkinson. My main job was in the sports department, but my heart was still in weather. And, I did get a chance to handle a few weather casts on this legendary Montgomery station. This was big time TV to me, and I fondly recall my days and all the friends I made there. Just don’t ask me about the dinner at Quincy’s on the Southern Bypass one Saturday night between the 6:00 and the 10:00 news with my friends Norman Lumpkin and Mack Carmack.

1979: For no real reason, I accepted a job at WHHY-FM, Y-102, in Montgomery in May 1979. Most folks laughed at me, since I had the dream job at Channel 12, but I missed radio, and Larry Stevens gave me the chance to work the afternoon shift on his FM station. Turned out to be the most carefree summer of my life, and I cherish the memories. No working weekends… I had a “normal” life and set of hours for the first time in 6 years.

August 1979: I got a call from Wendell Harris, the news director at Channel 13 in Birmingham, at the time WAPI-TV. He asked me to come up and talk with him about doing weather on his station, and was pretty much hired on the spot. Talk about a God thing; I had little experience, no formal training in weather, and quite frankly, was not very good. But Wendell saw a spark which turned out to be a flame soon enough. I gave my two week notice at Y-102, and was ready for the move to a new town and a new job.

September 1979: I started at Channel 13 on September Monday September 10, and it was clear to me that a major hurricane, Frederic, was going to wreak havoc on the Central Gulf Coast my first week, which was to be a week of getting up to speed with the station, meeting the folks I would be working with, and getting a weather coverage plan together. Turns out Wendell sent me down to the Alabama Coast to cover the arrival of Frederic. It was all enough to make my head spin… being the main weather anchor in a city the size of Birmingham at the age of 23, and then covering an historic hurricane on my third day on the job.

My photographer was the late Dwayne Syltie, who was a Mobile native and very reassuring for me on that trip. Back in 1979, there were no live satellite trucks, and our coverage was done via telephone. We opted not to ride out the big storm on the beach, but at an evacuation center in Mobile at Azalea Middle School. The noise of the storm enough was enough to drive anyone crazy, and during the height of the storm part of the school’s roof started to peel off, and a number of senior adults who were at the school from a local nursing home had to be moved to another part of the building. We were about to get a line out for a live report via phone on the 10:00 news on September 12, but the phone line soon went out, and there was no power. Basically all we had were Dwayne’s TV lights. I thought the dawn would never come.

The following morning, September 13, we shot video from Mobile and down on the coast, and had to drive the video tape all the way back to Birmingham to get it on the air that night. The following day, September 14, I would return to the coast via our new station helicopter called Sky 13. Seeing Gulf Shores in ruins, and the bridge to Dauphin Island blown away, was a memory that is still very fresh in my mind today. The rebuilding process that would follow started the construction boom that still is alive today in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach.

I would go on to work at Channel 13 until the summer of 1984, when the parent company moved me to their largest station, which was KDFW-TV, Channel 4, in Dallas (the CBS affiliate at the time). I would come back to Birmingham in 1989 to go to work for WBRC, and then joined ABC 33/40 one month after the new operation signed on in the fall of 1996. Along the way I went back to school and finished the meteorology program at Mississippi State University, and picked up the AMS CBM (Certified Broadcast Meteorologist), and NWA Seal of Approval (National Weather Association). I have worked so many historic weather events on my watch that I would not even try to write them in this space, but that September night in 1979 was one of the clearest memories, simply because that was my first big assignment for Birmingham TV. What a week it was.

You see, I am living the dream, and loving my job more every day. Even after 31 years….

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