When WKRG television, Mobile, decided to integrate the newsroom, management knew the hire would need to be a very special person. Their search started and stopped with an English professor at Bishop State Community College.

After learning his name would be submitted to the station, Mel Showers became proactive and spent summer vacation attending broadcast school in Texas. In addition to looking for a quick-study, the station wanted someone with the right personality since this was going to be a difficult transition for the new reporter. Hiring Mel proved to be more than a good hire. Not only had he been through military intelligence training, he would step in with broadcast training and an FCC license. Mel proved to be a talented and committed newsman, who remains at the same station after 46 years.

Mel can attribute his broadcasting career in part, to his college professor and his father. Without his professor suggesting him for the interview, and his father insisting Mel follow up after his interview, Mel doesn’t know where he would be today. With his father’s nudging, Mel learned the station was waiting to hire him as a booth announcer. That young announcer felt wealthy making $3.15 an hour.

Arriving with the FCC license, Mel, in the absence of station management, could give the weather, news, and sign the station on and off the air. In years past, the FCC required public service programming, and Mel served as on-air host for You and Your Community, a local program that ran for about four years. He often worked seven days a week, covering whatever needed to be done. By his senior year at University of South Alabama, Mel says, “WKRG made an offer I couldn’t refuse.” Management realized the value Mel brought to the station and offered him a significant raise and anchor position. Mel’s dedication to the station was rewarded with the
10 p.m. weather slot. He started out giving the weather using a magic marker, then progressed to “magnetic stickums”.

Mel’s talent and personality made the transition as easy smooth as possible. “I had a good support system from the station,” Mel recalls, “they told me not to worry about the (negative) calls and to just do my job.” He says he received the same support from the local civil rights community. Mel was wise as he moved to the anchor desk, “…if I was sitting by a white co-anchor, I told them not to touch me on the air; people were not ready for that.” He made sure he kept a smile on his face at all times, and after a couple years, he began feeling acceptance, “It started to catch on with the viewing public, hate mail changed to fan mail.”

After 46 years on the air, it’s difficult for Mel to choose specific memories. But he does recall a morning when everyone called in sick but him, “I did weather, sports and Pensacola news.” Mel laughs and he says his face was put in the hairlines of all the reporters who were absent that day and each segment was introduced as Mel (fill in absent reporter’s last name).

To date, the one story Mel remembers, with mixed emotion, occurred on June 6, 1997, when he witnessed the execution of Henry Francis Hays. Hays was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and was responsible for the brutal slaying of 19-year-old Michael Donald. “I was standing pretty darn close to Hays,” Mel says. “Before they put the hood on, he looked me in the eyes and gave me a thumbs up.” He also remembers being on the air 24 hours a day for nine days, following Hurricane Katrina, “We had minimal damage, but we wanted to provide information for those hit hardest in southern Mississippi.”

Mel enjoys speaking with young people and giving them encouragement; he tells them to stay in school and study hard. With a smile in his voice, he says, “I tell them I get paid for running my mouth; that’s usually when the teacher clears her voice, like “I can’t believe you said that.” He quickly tells the class to sit quietly, “and one of these days you may be paid for running your mouth.”

Mel has represented his station and his community for more than four decades. He continues to cover for his team, as during a recent evening when the sports director was on vacation. That’s Mel.