Atlanta radio host Wanda Smith, who brought a bubbly, comedic side to V-103′s morning shows for more than 20 years, has died.
Her sister Janice Smith Woodside confirmed the news to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Saturday night. She declined to say the cause of death.
V-103 also announced Smith’s death Saturday night during the So So Def concert at Wolf Creek Amphitheatre in Atlanta. Reggie Rouse, V-103′s program director, on social media said her “impact touched lives beyond making us laugh.”
Smith, 59, worked with host Frank Ski at V-103 for two stints, first from 1998 to 2013, then again in 2018. She also worked with Ryan Cameron from 2013 to 2017. The show was No. 1 in Atlanta for much of that time.
“Wanda was special for her ability to connect with the average, everyday listener, especially the women of Atlanta,” said Jean Ross, the longtime news anchor for the Frank and Wanda morning show. “She was your ‘sister girlfriend’ on the radio.”
Cameron said “she never met a stranger. She was very much in tune with the community.”
A Miami native, Smith said she didn’t grow up expecting to land in radio. “Sometime we’re put in positions where we don’t know why we’re put there,” she told V-103 in a seventh-anniversary Frank and Wanda press handout in 2005. “My goal was to go to L.A. and do movies, and hit the silver screen and become a megastar, but I guess God had other plans.”
Derek Harper, producer for Mike Roberts and Carol Blackmon, saw Smith doing stand up at Cafe Echelon in Atlanta in 197 and offered her a part-time job at V-103 on the morning show.
When Ski joined V-103 in 1998, Smith stayed on. “I was the serious person and she provided the light,” Ski said. “And whenever there was a natural disaster or people needed help, she was immediately on air to get help. We’d do diaper drives. She really understood the needs of the single mother.”
In a heartfelt video Instagram post Sunday, Ski said Smith taught him about empathy. He recounted how they raised money for firefighters after 9/11 and victims of Hurricane Katrina. He recalled how she helped V-103 fans get passports when the station took 200 of them on a trip to South Africa.
Although they drifted apart after she lost her job at V-103 in early 2019, he said they reconciled last year. In fact, he said they were about to reunite on Kiss 104.1 but then she fell ill.
“She didn’t want anybody to know,’ Ski said. “She was public for everybody else and private inside. She was beautiful. I miss you babe. She was my radio wife, for real, for real.”
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Smith also spent much of the past 30 years hosting comedy shows for Uptown Comedy Corner, then Atlanta Comedy Theater in Norcross.
“She was a comedian before she was a radio host,” said Gary Abdo, who used to co-own Uptown and now owns Atlanta Comedy Theater. “What drives a comic to do what they do is internal and it never goes away. She was a legend here.” She never complained about hosting comedy shows until midnight, then waking up at 4 a.m. for the morning show, he said.
“My biggest goal is I enjoy helping people,” Smith said in 2005. At the same time, she added, “I’m waking people up to go to jobs that they might not like, but I can put a smile on their face on their way to their jobs.”
Credit: V-10-3
Credit: V-10-3
Special K, an associate producer and head writer for The Rickey Smiley Morning Show, knew Smith for 28 years. “She loved being a wife. She loved being a mom,” he said. “She loved that I was one of the few in the comedy community considered a family man. She always respected that about me. She was my biggest advocate but she would yank my chain when necessary and tell me things I needed to hear but didn’t want to hear. We had that kind of friendship.”
Smith’s generosity, he said, came from a genuine place and not for likes or clicks. “She volunteered at senior homes and visited people whose family didn’t visit them or didn’t have family,” Special K said. “She’d read to them. A lot of them had no idea who she was but she didn’t care. They just knew her as that nice lady who came by and hung out with them.”
Griff, who worked with Smith on the Frank and Wanda show from 1998 to 2001, said from the moment he met her, “I never forgot how infectious her laugh was. We had so many things in common. I was able to accept a Marconi award for best syndicated show with Erica Campbell because of Wanda. She taught me about radio. She taught me breaks. She taught me timing. She taught me to keep the same energy when we saw people in the streets. We played like children from 6 to 10 a.m. every morning. Frank was like a foster dad who couldn’t control us, but we had to listen to him.”
Smith in 2015 was hospitalized with a colon infection but recuperated. In 2017, she took time off after an abscess was removed from her ovary. In 2018, she got into a verbal tiff on air with comic Katt Williams that went viral. Williams later at a comedy club verbally assaulted her, her husband LaMorris Sellers told the AJC at the time.
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
In a statement Sunday, Mayor Andre Dickens said Atlanta had “lost a staple” in both the city’s media and culture.
“We not only trusted her—we relied on her for her acumen, a common sense way of speaking to her listeners…and perhaps most importantly, telling us it was okay to laugh in good times and bad,” Dickens said. “She was a voice for so many Atlantans and my thoughts and prayers are with her family, loved ones and folks like me who just loved her.”
Smith is survived by her two sons Giovanni and Tavares, her mother Ethel and her sister Janice Smith Woodside. Woodside said funeral plans are still in the works.
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