When your mother is one of the most well-known and admired people in town, it can be hard growing up in such a large shadow … especially if your mother was Agnes Simpson, general manager of WOOF in Dothan, Alabama, and the very first person inducted into the Alabama Broadcasters Association’s Hall of Fame. But not only did daughter Leigh fill Miss Agnes’ very large shoes, she, too, became one of Dothan’s most respected citizens as general manager of the station. Which is why the ABA is honored to also induct Leigh Simpson into the association’s Hall of Fame.

“Everything I do is because of Mama,” says Simpson. “So when Sharon Tinsley told me about the award and that it was the very first time a parent and a child would be inducted, that made it worth everything.”

Simpson can’t remember a time when radio wasn’t a part of her life. She said that she and her siblings were regularly at the station from a very young age.

“We had to pick up the coffee cups, empty the ashtrays, clean the floors and fill the Coke and Pepsi machines … anything she told us to do,” chuckles Simpson. “There was even a little table in Mom’s office with a typewriter and that’s where I worked.”

As her children grew older, Miss Agnes increased their radio knowledge. “We all had to learn how to work shifts,” she says. “All of us knew how to run the board in our teens.”

While in college Simpson made a decision that resulted in her life-long dedication to radio. “Mom was having problems at the station during my second semester as a junior,” she explains. “I decided I needed to help so I left school and went home. That’s how I jumped into it and I was there from 1982 until my retirement last October.

Although Simpson has had many accomplishments throughout the years, she’s most proud of how she changed the work culture of the station. “When I first got there, it was a revolving door, but then I was kind of the mother hen,” she smiles. “I tried to take care of everybody like I would like someone to take care of me. And employees started staying, working there 20, sometimes 30 years.”

“We had a very, very good family atmosphere. We raised our kids together and as we got older we all talked about our extended pains together,” she laughs. “It was a family – on the air and within the station.”

Simpson took care of the community like family, too. “If you truly believe in radio, it’s a 24 hours a day, seven days a week job. I believe in live and local … in having a staff there around the clock,” she says. “If the EMA needed to call to tell us about something that’s going on, there’s got to be somebody there to answer the phone and put it on the air.”

“It was important to me to be a family-centered radio station on the air just like we were in the station. That’s the way radio was meant to be.”

The decision to retire was a hard one.  “ I love radio – it’s been my life, but you know, I was tired,” says Simpson.  “Mom always said she wanted to go out of the radio station feet first. I did not!”

“And corporate radio is just not the same. It’s just not me,” she says. “So retiring was the best thing to do.”

Simpson says she’s still very much in touch with what’s going on at the station. “I still talk to Michael, (Michael Anderson, current general manager), every day. We can get online and I help fix things,” she says. “So I kind of participate because you know, I love it!”