Kerry Jackson almost didn’t have a choice when it came to his career path. That doesn’t necessarily sound like a positive, but in Jackson’s case, not having a choice was the best choice he could have ever made. As a kid, being at WGSV was just like being at home, and all these years later, nothing has changed. For keeping WGSV a local, tight-knit community station that Guntersville depends on, the ABA is very pleased to induct Kerry Jackson into the Hall of Fame.

“As far back as I can remember, my dad was in broadcasting before me,” smiles Jackson. “My mom worked at the radio station too and I kind of grew up with it at the supper table, hearing about it.”

“When I was just a few years old, my dad let me go with him to the radio station to do his engineering after station signed off,” he continues. “It was kind of a wonderland for me. I got to sit at the control board and play records and flip the knobs and switches and things and kind of got a fascination for it when I was real young.”

“I worked  63 of the 76 years that the radio station has been on the air, so I knew Kerry since he was a kid, and Kerry was a good kid,” says Bill Yancy, former WGSV disc jockey and sports announcer. “He followed in the footsteps of his daddy on the technical and engineering part of broadcasting. Just give him a soldering gun, and he’ll keep that transmitter on the air.”

“When I was about ten, my dad let me be a board operator for a network show,” says Jackson.  “Someone needed to sit at the console and when they would give a cue, you would need to turn them off and turn on one of our commercials. And then go back after the commercial played. And I got to do that when I was really young and I guess that’s when I got the bug.”

“In high school I got my license and my dad let me be on the air. My friends thought it was a pretty neat thing because that was back about the time that the Beatles arrived on the scene and like so many others we decided to start a little band. I could get records and bring them home, and we could listen to the records and learn how to play, and I’d take them back the next day!”

“He started as a teenager – KJ the DJ,” laughs Yancy. “He had many gold records awarded to him for being the first or one of the first DJs to promote a song as a hit. He has 31 gold records that are still on the walls out at the studio.”

Although Jackson is proud of those gold records, he’s even more proud of being a local station.

“We’ve always been a small station in a small town. And we’ve had a real connection with the community,” says Jackson. “There’s a picture that hangs on the wall of when we signed on the air, and back in 1950 having a radio station in your community was an event. The picture shows that the parking lot filled with cars and all these people coming for the first day of operation of the radio station”

“There was and is a real connection with the community and I would say that I’m most proud of being in touch with the community. To this day we have a call-in swap shop, and we have an obituary report. We have local news and we carry local sports. We’ve always tried to be a hometown community station.”

Jackson says his son, Blake, is now following in his footsteps.

“He’s very involved in the station and the local sports part of it. He loves advertising sales; helping businesses get their word out to people,” says Jackson proudly. “There are no plans to quit doing what we’re doing. We’re just going to keep on!”