David McElroy

I didn’t understand at the time how I ended up in charge of the radio project. People just started obeying what I said to do.

I was 15 years old. The National Junior Honor Society at Walker High School had an annual fundraiser with WARF radio in Jasper, Ala. For one Saturday of each year — some slow day when few other ads were sold anyway — we were allowed to sell as many ads as we could and then come to the station to perform them.

As far as I recall, the fundraiser had never been a big deal before. There was no planning that went into it. We were told one Friday morning that we could sell ads that day — during class time — and then write the ad copy. It seemed like a cool way to get out of classes for the day.

We met in a classroom underneath the school library. It was chaos at first. Naturally, most kids wanted to leave school and sell ads instead of staying behind to write ad copy. There were a few ads already sold which needed to be written, so I sat down with a few other people to start writing.

Nobody was in charge, but before I knew it, I was in charge. For years, I’ve pondered the lessons of that weekend — how it came to be that people followed me.

Keep Reading