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Celebrating the power of possibility.

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I'm Mike Hammond and I believe anything is possible.

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Welcome to anything is possible. I'm Haloran Hilton Hill and these are of course great stories about great people whose lives prove that anything is possible.

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My guest today is Mike Hammond. Mike, welcome to the broadcast.

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Well, thank you for having me. It's good to be here.

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I'm Mike Hammond and I believe anything is possible.

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I'm from Hawkins County. I grew up on a farm in Sir Goinsville, Tennessee. People don't know where Sir Goinsville is.

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Nope.

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I graduated from Church Hill High School, came to the University of Tennessee and had a degree in broadcasting.

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Let's go back to your radio journey because our lives intersected around a broadcast company and some really influential and important people.

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We met at the intersection of James A. Dick.

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Right.

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Right. He gave both of us a great opportunity. Talk about getting into your career in radio.

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My voice changed when I was in the fifth grade and I was blessed with a voice.

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It was interesting because I'd be walking around the school with this deep voice and the girls liked it.

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I got involved in speech contests and I got involved in acting.

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The drama teacher at our high school in Church Hill came to me and said, would you consider trying out?

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I said, sure. I played Phineas, I think it was Phineas T. Fogg around the world in 80 days.

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The manager of the radio station happened to be in the audience when we were doing our play.

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After the play, she came up to me and said, would you ever consider being on the radio?

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Of course, I worked on a farm. I hadn't really thought about it. She said, well, I really like your voice.

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I think you'd sound good on the radio. Why don't you come and do an audition tape?

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So I did. I did the audition tape, was hired on the spot and started working weekends at WMCH AM,

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a daytime-only station in Church Hill, Tennessee.

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Found out that I loved it. That's what I wanted to do with my life.

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And so when I came to the University of Tennessee, I studied broadcasting and got a part-time job at the old WBIR AM.

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Doc Johnson was the morning show host there. Some of your viewers may remember Doc Johnson.

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And then I worked there for a few months and went over to WETE and started working there and mainly doing news.

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And from there, I needed a full-time job. And so there was an opening at WIVK.

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And so I interviewed with James Dick. And James Dick, as you know, he was one of those, he'd check you out.

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Oh, yes, he would.

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So we did the interview and he wanted a list of references and I gave him the list and all of this.

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And so he said, I'll call you. I never thought I'd get a phone call.

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Well, I did. And he said, Mr. Hammond, I'd like to hire you.

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And I said, well, I'd like you to hire me, Mr. Dick.

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So he hired me and I was a student at the University.

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And so that was how I got started at WIVK and was there almost 40 years.

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You moved up through management at WIVK.

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I guess we probably should pause and just talk about how significant WIVK was, is.

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But there was a point in the world of broadcasting.

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And this is right in the middle of the time that you're there.

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WIVK, based on market share, was, I guess, the number one radio station in the United States of America.

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It was. It was the highest rated station.

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At one time we had almost a 40 share of the market.

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Now, that's unbelievable now.

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Four out of every 10 people were listening to WIVK.

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And when you go back and you look at it, you had Claude the Cat in the Morning with Lester and Old Man Shultz.

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You had people like Ed Brantley and Bob Thomas and Bobby Denton.

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You know, Bobby's a legend in his own right.

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And so the staff that James Dick put together was unbelievable.

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And then we started the news talk portion of things.

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And you came along with some other folks and really built that brand up.

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And so he had a knack for bringing people together, but not just bringing people together.

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He had a knack for developing people and bringing together a team.

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And we were all working for the same goal, and that was the success of the company.

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And one of the things I've always appreciated about him was he said,

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if we're successful, you will be successful.

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And that was true.

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How did you move up through the company?

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Well, I started as part-time and the news director left.

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And so when the news director left, Mr. Dick came to me and he said,

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I'd like for you to be our news director.

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And I said, Mr. Dick, I've never been a news director.

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I said, I'm only part-time. I don't have a lot of experience.

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I'd done some news at WETE.

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And he said, you're exactly what I want in a news director.

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And he says, what you don't know, we'll teach you.

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And I thought, that's fair.

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So I said, OK, I'll do it.

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And so I became the news director and from then got into programming.

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And from there, got into the management side of things and did some sales and marketing and those kinds of things.

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And when he bought the radio station in Birmingham,

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he sent me to Birmingham to run the properties down there.

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And it was a rock and roll station with a sports, it was called the Sports Jocks at the time.

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One of the first sports stations in America, by the way, on radio.

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And that was how we met, was the news talk station came on board.

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And Mr. Dick contacted me and said, would you want to come back to Knoxville?

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You know, Knoxville is your home.

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And we've got a news talk station and with your news and background and everything,

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we think that you would be the perfect person to head this up.

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And so I was asking him, I said, well, who's on the staff?

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And he said, well, we got a Halloran Hill.

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I'd never heard of Halloran Hill.

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And so anyway, I said, OK, I said, but here's what I'd like to do is I said, you know, if we want to grow this,

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we've really got to go with the best.

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And I had a friend of mine who worked in Los Angeles at KFI, Mark Thomas, who we met.

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So I called you, Hal, and I said, do you want to fly to Los Angeles?

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And we went to LA.

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We did.

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We went to LA, first time I'd ever met Hal.

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So here we are in LA in Los Angeles and we meet Dr. Laura Schlesinger and some of the other talent that was there at KFI.

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But we learned, we learned about news talk.

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We learned how to be a successful station.

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And we came back and implemented a lot of that.

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And of course, the rest is history.

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It worked.

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Possibility powered by Covenant Health, Home Federal, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.

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One of the things I think you for is you're like, I trust you to do it.

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Go do it.

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But James Dick was that way.

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He was.

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He would point you in a direction.

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And I remember I was filling some little slot in the afternoon and he said, Hal, I want you to move to mornings or something.

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He said, no, I'm good where I am.

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Not a noon was going real.

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It was rocking.

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He said, wasn't a question.

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I know.

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I used to tell people.

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He would throw us out there.

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Oh, he would.

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But it developed you.

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What were you saying?

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No, you're exactly right.

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I would tell people that he wants you to do the job.

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He would let you do your job.

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He would train you.

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He would give you the tools that you needed to get the job done.

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And I used to tell people that one of the loneliest times in your life is when you get that phone call.

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And it's, Mr. Hammond, could you come to my office please?

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And I'd walk down that hallway.

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And that was the loneliest walk because I knew I was in trouble when he called me Mr. Hammond.

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He had the most wonderful way of chewing you out and lifting you up.

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He did.

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Here's a James Dick thing.

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He hated waste.

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If he saw a copier paper being thrown away, I remember, you know, we'd print stuff out.

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And he'd go get the paper out of the trash.

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He'd say, what are you doing?

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He said, the back half of this paper is perfectly fine to use.

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And he would make notepads out of the thrown away paper.

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I always remembered that.

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So you were there 40 years.

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Yes.

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And you could have just, but you made a major shift into public life.

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And I've never had a chance to talk to you about that.

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I was contacted by then Mayor Ragsdale.

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Mike Arms, who was his chief of staff, he was a county commissioner.

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And there was a conflict of interest there.

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And so Mike Arms knew he needed to leave the county commission and serve full time as the mayor's chief of staff.

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So they contacted me and they said, I lived in Farragut at the time.

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And they said, would you consider running for a county commission?

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I said, why would I want to do that?

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And they said, well, we need good people.

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You know, they give you the whole spiel.

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And so anyway, I got to thinking about it and I thought, well, why not?

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I may as well give it a shot.

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I've always had an interest in public service and politics and that type of thing.

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And I thought, well, may as well go ahead and try it and see.

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So I ran and won.

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And so I served on county commission from the Farragut area for six years at a partial term of two years and a full term.

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And then an opportunity came to run countywide because at that time you remember Black Wednesday and I was involved in all of that.

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And then we had the changeover from a 19 member commission to 11.

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And so I ran for an at-large seat and won the at-large seat.

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And so it was a very interesting time because we went through a lot of turmoil in Knox County.

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You remember it well and all of the things that were going on and, you know, we were charged with.

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Black Wednesday, P-Cards, Gandole, all of us.

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We had trial.

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Trial.

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You know, we had to go to court for violating the Sunshine Law.

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And so it was a lot of turmoil.

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But one of the things I learned from that is government can operate and be efficient in the light of day.

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You don't have to be behind the scenes.

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You don't have to do things behind closed doors.

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Government works just fine when your business is done in public.

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And those, these are two different worlds, though.

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You were on this side over here in media and in management.

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And then you step over in the public world.

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Were you surprised that you won?

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And were you surprised that you liked it?

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Yeah, I was surprised I won because I thought, well, why would people want to vote for me?

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And so, you know, I had competition, but I won.

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And I thought, well, people have put their confidence in me, so I need to do a good job.

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And so I set about, you know, learning the job.

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It takes a while because when you're looking at the, you know, all of government,

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there's so much involved in it, in particular when you're on commission,

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because, you know, you're involved in everything,

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all the way from the library to the health department to the budget, you, the parks and record, you name it.

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You're involved in it.

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And so I learned a lot very quickly, education.

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The biggest issue we had when I came on board was whether or not to build a new Hardin Valley High School.

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I remember that.

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Because you had a lot of issues down in Farragut with overcrowding, and so should we build it?

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And it was a fight because we had a 19-member commission, and there were people that said,

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oh, they don't need another school down in Farragut.

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We need one in this part of the county or that part of the county.

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But we were able to get it done, and Hardin Valley Academy opened, and it's been a very successful school since.

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Then you moved even further into public life.

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What happened next?

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Well, there were issues in the criminal court clerk's office, and it was very widely publicized.

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People were put in jail when they shouldn't have been put in jail, and there were just a lot of problems.

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And so I was approached by two judges, as a matter of fact, who said,

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would you consider running for criminal court clerk?

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And I said, why would I want to do that?

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Exactly.

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And I said, I'm not a lawyer.

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And they said, that office doesn't need a lawyer.

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It needs someone who understands management and business and who can provide leadership.

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They said, you've got people that know the law.

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We can, you know.

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And so I said, well, let me think about it.

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And so I thought about it, and at the time I was being encouraged by, I said, a couple of judges and some other people who said,

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we really think you could do a good job and straighten that office out.

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And so I thought, well, I'll give it a shot.

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And well, I won.

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And so here we are 10 years later.

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I've been the criminal court clerk, and I have found that I have really enjoyed the job.

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Really?

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And it's one of those things where...

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What did you have to do going in to write the ship?

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Well, I will tell you that the first day I came on board, the bank account had been emptied.

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We had no records of anything.

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My predecessor had just wiped out the office clean.

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Really?

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Yes.

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And when I had won the primary in May, there was not a Democrat opponent.

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The consensus was, let him worry about it.

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Me being me.

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And so we walked in and there were files stacked almost to the top of this room.

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The first month, and Richard Major, I hired him as my chief deputy, and that was a great hire because Richard's one of the smartest legal minds in Knoxville.

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And I relied on him a lot from a legal standpoint.

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But we got together and got our staff together.

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And in one month, we filed 200,000 files.

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I'm not exaggerating.

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200,000 of stuff that was just strewn around in the offices and so forth.

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So that was our first task, was to get it straightened out.

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The second task was, our bank account had been emptied, but Knox County gave us money to meet our payroll for the first two payrolls.

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So we got about the business of getting our money collected because that's one of the mandates of the office.

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And so we were able to start collecting money and putting in some policies and procedures where we could get that done.

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And so it was a rough six months, but we were able to get it straightened out and write the ship.

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And now we're doing very well.

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One of the things I remember from you as a manager and leader on our side of the business was, and James Dick was big about this.

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And I think it was one of the things that led to the success of WIVK was, you always wanted there to be systems.

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We had to have a way we did things.

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And oddly enough, back in the day when we were with Mr. Dick, we literally wore suits and ties on the radio.

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We did.

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Right?

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But there were always systems.

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And you always wanted things.

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When did you become that kind of a person?

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Did you grow up that way?

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Because you always wanted order and systems.

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I think it was growing up on the farm.

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You woke up in the morning and you milked cows and you fed the cows and then you came back and you got ready for school.

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You went to school and when you came back, it was all over again.

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You had to go back and do it.

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And in the summertime, of course, you always had chores and things to do, but everything was in order.

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You knew what you had to do today.

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You knew what you had to do the next day.

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And so I think that's pretty much where I really got this thing of order and systems.

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And if you're going to get things done, particularly on a farm, if you don't have some type of system, things aren't going to get done.

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And then when I got into the radio station and started learning, of course, Mr. Dick was another master at systems and getting things done.

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I learned a lot from him.

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What did you learn from him?

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People, mainly.

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He was a great, like you said, he could chew you out and build you up at the same time.

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Yeah.

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But I learned from him how to deal with people.

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You rarely saw him raise his voice.

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You rarely saw him yell.

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I never saw him yell and scream at anybody.

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I never did either.

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But yet he commanded respect.

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You respected that man just because of the way he carried himself and the way he talked with you.

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He treated you with respect.

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You wanted to treat him with respect.

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I think that's the biggest thing that I have learned is you treat people with respect and you're up front with them.

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You tell them the way it is and you don't play games.

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You just say, hey, let's work on this.

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Let's make it better.

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You don't tear people down.

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You try to build them up.

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That's one of the things I remember about you and our relationship.

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First of all, you were just very forthright with me about everything.

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You were just like, Alan, here's what it is.

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Here's what we need to work on.

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But I also always felt like you had my back because let's just say when I first arrived on the scene,

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there were some people that were not too pleased and we went through a lot of stuff.

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The thing that I remembered about you and Bobby and Mr. Dick, no matter how tough the racial stuff got, you guys didn't back up.

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We've never talked about that.

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No, I think that one of the things about Mr. Dick was he was very involved in Knoxville College and he got me very involved in Knoxville College.

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He wanted to see Knoxville College succeed.

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He was very, very much involved in uplifting the African-American community.

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It was one of those things where you learn and as you're associating with people, you see, okay, there's some needs here.

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We can help meet these needs.

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That was what I saw in him was when he would see a need, he wouldn't want to try to help it to try to build people up and to try to meet those needs.

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I've always respected him for that.

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What's next for you now?

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Well, I'm looking at running for Knox County Mayor just to be quite frank.

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It's been in the news and so I'm going to see how that works out.

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The reason I'm doing that is I've enjoyed being clerk.

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It's not a term-limited position and people have told me they have said, you know, you all have your head examined.

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Why would you want to give up a position that's not term-limited?

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Think about all of the inflection points in your life.

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They start with a question and you go, why would I do that?

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Right.

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But you're saying you're thinking about that.

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People are saying, I mean, you could ride this all the way out.

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I could and enjoy, you know, in my career doing that.

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And so I think it's one of those things where I see having been in that building, City County building now for 10 years, I see things that I think can be improved.

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Things that can get done.

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And that's what I want to do is I've always prided myself on being able to get things done.

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So I just feel like there are things to do.

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I think Mayor Jacobs has done a really good job.

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And so this is not a slam on anybody.

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It's just that different people have different ideas of doing things.

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And I'll bring, if, should I be elected, I'll be bringing you ideas to the table.

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So you raised a family here.

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Yes.

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Did you think that you would from Sir Goensville?

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Did you see the Mike Hammond that sits before me today as a possibility?

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No.

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If you had told me that I would be the criminal court clerk in Knox County, that I would be a politician, that I would be thinking about, you know, making a run for Mayor and moving in that direction, I would have said, you know, you're crazy.

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Because I was a farm boy.

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And so when you're on the farm, I wanted to be a lawyer.

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What's kind of interesting?

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I had thought, well, you know, maybe I could be a lawyer or I could do something.

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I knew I didn't want to stand in a tobacco field in August for the rest of my life or pick strawberries, which is, which is one of the crops that we did.

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But I knew I wanted to do something else.

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And when I got into radio, I thought, this is my niche.

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This, I can do this.

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I enjoy it.

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I love it.

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And it has, it has been my career.

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But I think part of that is public service.

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Radio is public service.

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You know, you're on the air every day and you're there to serve the community and listen to people and talk through issues and problems and concerns.

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So I think we all have it in us to serve.

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And that's been me as I've always wanted to serve.

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And this would be just another avenue of service.

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And this will be it for me, by the way.

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Should I, should I win mayor?

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I have no aspirations to do anything else.

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This will be it.

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And then I'll just ride off into the sunset and my lovely wife, Dawn, and I hopefully will be watching water somewhere.

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Well, I want to thank you for being a possibility person.

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You invested in me and you helped me realize great possibility in my life.

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And, you know, what would you do that for?

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Well, you do it so people like me could have an opportunity.

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So thank you for being a person of possibility and a great person in my life.

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Mike Hammond, thanks for being on anything that's possible.

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Well, I appreciate the opportunity here.

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It's good to see you again.

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Yes, sir.