Celebrating the power of possibility.
I'm Mike Hammond and I believe anything is possible.
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.
My guest today is Mike Hammond. Mike, welcome to the broadcast.
Well, thank you for having me. It's good to be here.
I'm Mike Hammond and I believe anything is possible.
I'm from Hawkins County. I grew up on a farm in Sir Goinsville, Tennessee. People don't know where Sir Goinsville is.
Nope.
I graduated from Church Hill High School, came to the University of Tennessee and had a degree in broadcasting.
Let's go back to your radio journey because our lives intersected around a broadcast company and some really influential and important people.
We met at the intersection of James A. Dick.
Right.
Right. He gave both of us a great opportunity. Talk about getting into your career in radio.
My voice changed when I was in the fifth grade and I was blessed with a voice.
It was interesting because I'd be walking around the school with this deep voice and the girls liked it.
I got involved in speech contests and I got involved in acting.
The drama teacher at our high school in Church Hill came to me and said, would you consider trying out?
I said, sure. I played Phineas, I think it was Phineas T. Fogg around the world in 80 days.
The manager of the radio station happened to be in the audience when we were doing our play.
After the play, she came up to me and said, would you ever consider being on the radio?
Of course, I worked on a farm. I hadn't really thought about it. She said, well, I really like your voice.
I think you'd sound good on the radio. Why don't you come and do an audition tape?
So I did. I did the audition tape, was hired on the spot and started working weekends at WMCH AM,
a daytime-only station in Church Hill, Tennessee.
Found out that I loved it. That's what I wanted to do with my life.
And so when I came to the University of Tennessee, I studied broadcasting and got a part-time job at the old WBIR AM.
Doc Johnson was the morning show host there. Some of your viewers may remember Doc Johnson.
And then I worked there for a few months and went over to WETE and started working there and mainly doing news.
And from there, I needed a full-time job. And so there was an opening at WIVK.
And so I interviewed with James Dick. And James Dick, as you know, he was one of those, he'd check you out.
Oh, yes, he would.
So we did the interview and he wanted a list of references and I gave him the list and all of this.
And so he said, I'll call you. I never thought I'd get a phone call.
Well, I did. And he said, Mr. Hammond, I'd like to hire you.
And I said, well, I'd like you to hire me, Mr. Dick.
So he hired me and I was a student at the University.
And so that was how I got started at WIVK and was there almost 40 years.
You moved up through management at WIVK.
I guess we probably should pause and just talk about how significant WIVK was, is.
But there was a point in the world of broadcasting.
And this is right in the middle of the time that you're there.
WIVK, based on market share, was, I guess, the number one radio station in the United States of America.
It was. It was the highest rated station.
At one time we had almost a 40 share of the market.
Now, that's unbelievable now.
Four out of every 10 people were listening to WIVK.
And when you go back and you look at it, you had Claude the Cat in the Morning with Lester and Old Man Shultz.
You had people like Ed Brantley and Bob Thomas and Bobby Denton.
You know, Bobby's a legend in his own right.
And so the staff that James Dick put together was unbelievable.
And then we started the news talk portion of things.
And you came along with some other folks and really built that brand up.
And so he had a knack for bringing people together, but not just bringing people together.
He had a knack for developing people and bringing together a team.
And we were all working for the same goal, and that was the success of the company.
And one of the things I've always appreciated about him was he said,
if we're successful, you will be successful.
And that was true.
How did you move up through the company?
Well, I started as part-time and the news director left.
And so when the news director left, Mr. Dick came to me and he said,
I'd like for you to be our news director.
And I said, Mr. Dick, I've never been a news director.
I said, I'm only part-time. I don't have a lot of experience.
I'd done some news at WETE.
And he said, you're exactly what I want in a news director.
And he says, what you don't know, we'll teach you.
And I thought, that's fair.
So I said, OK, I'll do it.
And so I became the news director and from then got into programming.
And from there, got into the management side of things and did some sales and marketing and those kinds of things.
And when he bought the radio station in Birmingham,
he sent me to Birmingham to run the properties down there.
And it was a rock and roll station with a sports, it was called the Sports Jocks at the time.
One of the first sports stations in America, by the way, on radio.
And that was how we met, was the news talk station came on board.
And Mr. Dick contacted me and said, would you want to come back to Knoxville?
You know, Knoxville is your home.
And we've got a news talk station and with your news and background and everything,
we think that you would be the perfect person to head this up.
And so I was asking him, I said, well, who's on the staff?
And he said, well, we got a Halloran Hill.
I'd never heard of Halloran Hill.
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,
we've really got to go with the best.
And I had a friend of mine who worked in Los Angeles at KFI, Mark Thomas, who we met.
So I called you, Hal, and I said, do you want to fly to Los Angeles?
And we went to LA.
We did.
We went to LA, first time I'd ever met Hal.
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.
But we learned, we learned about news talk.
We learned how to be a successful station.
And we came back and implemented a lot of that.
And of course, the rest is history.
It worked.
Possibility powered by Covenant Health, Home Federal, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.
One of the things I think you for is you're like, I trust you to do it.
Go do it.
But James Dick was that way.
He was.
He would point you in a direction.
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.
He said, no, I'm good where I am.
Not a noon was going real.
It was rocking.
He said, wasn't a question.
I know.
I used to tell people.
He would throw us out there.
Oh, he would.
But it developed you.
What were you saying?
No, you're exactly right.
I would tell people that he wants you to do the job.
He would let you do your job.
He would train you.
He would give you the tools that you needed to get the job done.
And I used to tell people that one of the loneliest times in your life is when you get that phone call.
And it's, Mr. Hammond, could you come to my office please?
And I'd walk down that hallway.
And that was the loneliest walk because I knew I was in trouble when he called me Mr. Hammond.
He had the most wonderful way of chewing you out and lifting you up.
He did.
Here's a James Dick thing.
He hated waste.
If he saw a copier paper being thrown away, I remember, you know, we'd print stuff out.
And he'd go get the paper out of the trash.
He'd say, what are you doing?
He said, the back half of this paper is perfectly fine to use.
And he would make notepads out of the thrown away paper.
I always remembered that.
So you were there 40 years.
Yes.
And you could have just, but you made a major shift into public life.
And I've never had a chance to talk to you about that.
I was contacted by then Mayor Ragsdale.
Mike Arms, who was his chief of staff, he was a county commissioner.
And there was a conflict of interest there.
And so Mike Arms knew he needed to leave the county commission and serve full time as the mayor's chief of staff.
So they contacted me and they said, I lived in Farragut at the time.
And they said, would you consider running for a county commission?
I said, why would I want to do that?
And they said, well, we need good people.
You know, they give you the whole spiel.
And so anyway, I got to thinking about it and I thought, well, why not?
I may as well give it a shot.
I've always had an interest in public service and politics and that type of thing.
And I thought, well, may as well go ahead and try it and see.
So I ran and won.
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.
And then an opportunity came to run countywide because at that time you remember Black Wednesday and I was involved in all of that.
And then we had the changeover from a 19 member commission to 11.
And so I ran for an at-large seat and won the at-large seat.
And so it was a very interesting time because we went through a lot of turmoil in Knox County.
You remember it well and all of the things that were going on and, you know, we were charged with.
Black Wednesday, P-Cards, Gandole, all of us.
We had trial.
Trial.
You know, we had to go to court for violating the Sunshine Law.
And so it was a lot of turmoil.
But one of the things I learned from that is government can operate and be efficient in the light of day.
You don't have to be behind the scenes.
You don't have to do things behind closed doors.
Government works just fine when your business is done in public.
And those, these are two different worlds, though.
You were on this side over here in media and in management.
And then you step over in the public world.
Were you surprised that you won?
And were you surprised that you liked it?
Yeah, I was surprised I won because I thought, well, why would people want to vote for me?
And so, you know, I had competition, but I won.
And I thought, well, people have put their confidence in me, so I need to do a good job.
And so I set about, you know, learning the job.
It takes a while because when you're looking at the, you know, all of government,
there's so much involved in it, in particular when you're on commission,
because, you know, you're involved in everything,
all the way from the library to the health department to the budget, you, the parks and record, you name it.
You're involved in it.
And so I learned a lot very quickly, education.
The biggest issue we had when I came on board was whether or not to build a new Hardin Valley High School.
I remember that.
Because you had a lot of issues down in Farragut with overcrowding, and so should we build it?
And it was a fight because we had a 19-member commission, and there were people that said,
oh, they don't need another school down in Farragut.
We need one in this part of the county or that part of the county.
But we were able to get it done, and Hardin Valley Academy opened, and it's been a very successful school since.
Then you moved even further into public life.
What happened next?
Well, there were issues in the criminal court clerk's office, and it was very widely publicized.
People were put in jail when they shouldn't have been put in jail, and there were just a lot of problems.
And so I was approached by two judges, as a matter of fact, who said,
would you consider running for criminal court clerk?
And I said, why would I want to do that?
Exactly.
And I said, I'm not a lawyer.
And they said, that office doesn't need a lawyer.
It needs someone who understands management and business and who can provide leadership.
They said, you've got people that know the law.
We can, you know.
And so I said, well, let me think about it.
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,
we really think you could do a good job and straighten that office out.
And so I thought, well, I'll give it a shot.
And well, I won.
And so here we are 10 years later.
I've been the criminal court clerk, and I have found that I have really enjoyed the job.
Really?
And it's one of those things where...
What did you have to do going in to write the ship?
Well, I will tell you that the first day I came on board, the bank account had been emptied.
We had no records of anything.
My predecessor had just wiped out the office clean.
Really?
Yes.
And when I had won the primary in May, there was not a Democrat opponent.
The consensus was, let him worry about it.
Me being me.
And so we walked in and there were files stacked almost to the top of this room.
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.
And I relied on him a lot from a legal standpoint.
But we got together and got our staff together.
And in one month, we filed 200,000 files.
I'm not exaggerating.
200,000 of stuff that was just strewn around in the offices and so forth.
So that was our first task, was to get it straightened out.
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.
So we got about the business of getting our money collected because that's one of the mandates of the office.
And so we were able to start collecting money and putting in some policies and procedures where we could get that done.
And so it was a rough six months, but we were able to get it straightened out and write the ship.
And now we're doing very well.
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.
And I think it was one of the things that led to the success of WIVK was, you always wanted there to be systems.
We had to have a way we did things.
And oddly enough, back in the day when we were with Mr. Dick, we literally wore suits and ties on the radio.
We did.
Right?
But there were always systems.
And you always wanted things.
When did you become that kind of a person?
Did you grow up that way?
Because you always wanted order and systems.
I think it was growing up on the farm.
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.
You went to school and when you came back, it was all over again.
You had to go back and do it.
And in the summertime, of course, you always had chores and things to do, but everything was in order.
You knew what you had to do today.
You knew what you had to do the next day.
And so I think that's pretty much where I really got this thing of order and systems.
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.
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.
I learned a lot from him.
What did you learn from him?
People, mainly.
He was a great, like you said, he could chew you out and build you up at the same time.
Yeah.
But I learned from him how to deal with people.
You rarely saw him raise his voice.
You rarely saw him yell.
I never saw him yell and scream at anybody.
I never did either.
But yet he commanded respect.
You respected that man just because of the way he carried himself and the way he talked with you.
He treated you with respect.
You wanted to treat him with respect.
I think that's the biggest thing that I have learned is you treat people with respect and you're up front with them.
You tell them the way it is and you don't play games.
You just say, hey, let's work on this.
Let's make it better.
You don't tear people down.
You try to build them up.
That's one of the things I remember about you and our relationship.
First of all, you were just very forthright with me about everything.
You were just like, Alan, here's what it is.
Here's what we need to work on.
But I also always felt like you had my back because let's just say when I first arrived on the scene,
there were some people that were not too pleased and we went through a lot of stuff.
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.
We've never talked about that.
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.
He wanted to see Knoxville College succeed.
He was very, very much involved in uplifting the African-American community.
It was one of those things where you learn and as you're associating with people, you see, okay, there's some needs here.
We can help meet these needs.
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.
I've always respected him for that.
What's next for you now?
Well, I'm looking at running for Knox County Mayor just to be quite frank.
It's been in the news and so I'm going to see how that works out.
The reason I'm doing that is I've enjoyed being clerk.
It's not a term-limited position and people have told me they have said, you know, you all have your head examined.
Why would you want to give up a position that's not term-limited?
Think about all of the inflection points in your life.
They start with a question and you go, why would I do that?
Right.
But you're saying you're thinking about that.
People are saying, I mean, you could ride this all the way out.
I could and enjoy, you know, in my career doing that.
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.
Things that can get done.
And that's what I want to do is I've always prided myself on being able to get things done.
So I just feel like there are things to do.
I think Mayor Jacobs has done a really good job.
And so this is not a slam on anybody.
It's just that different people have different ideas of doing things.
And I'll bring, if, should I be elected, I'll be bringing you ideas to the table.
So you raised a family here.
Yes.
Did you think that you would from Sir Goensville?
Did you see the Mike Hammond that sits before me today as a possibility?
No.
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.
Because I was a farm boy.
And so when you're on the farm, I wanted to be a lawyer.
What's kind of interesting?
I had thought, well, you know, maybe I could be a lawyer or I could do something.
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.
But I knew I wanted to do something else.
And when I got into radio, I thought, this is my niche.
This, I can do this.
I enjoy it.
I love it.
And it has, it has been my career.
But I think part of that is public service.
Radio is public service.
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.
So I think we all have it in us to serve.
And that's been me as I've always wanted to serve.
And this would be just another avenue of service.
And this will be it for me, by the way.
Should I, should I win mayor?
I have no aspirations to do anything else.
This will be it.
And then I'll just ride off into the sunset and my lovely wife, Dawn, and I hopefully will be watching water somewhere.
Well, I want to thank you for being a possibility person.
You invested in me and you helped me realize great possibility in my life.
And, you know, what would you do that for?
Well, you do it so people like me could have an opportunity.
So thank you for being a person of possibility and a great person in my life.
Mike Hammond, thanks for being on anything that's possible.
Well, I appreciate the opportunity here.
It's good to see you again.
Yes, sir.