Story By John Mann

Guntersville lost a true legend of the community this past Sunday with the passing of eighty-seven-year-old Bruce Underwood, a fixture on the radio airwaves for over sixty years. 

Underwood got his start in Guntersville in 1958 after around a year at WGAD in Gadsden, AL, then came to WGSV where he would do a little bit of everything. He was the voice of Guntersville Wildcat football into the 1960s before Bill Yancy stepped into the role and hosted multiple radio shows like Let’s Go Fishing where he would go out and talk to anglers on Lake Guntersville.

He was a businessman who started Lake Guntersville Insurance and a pillar of his church over at Guntersville Church of Christ, where he would open up services with a few words and tell stories.

“He was the most positive person,” Blake Jackson, son of WTWX General Manager Kerry Jackson, said. “He never didn’t have a smile on his face. He did so much production work and always had a great attitude and had all these stories. He was married for almost seventy years, one of those guys that had it all, but he never met a stranger. If he went to the grocery store, he would have talked to fifteen people by the time he left.”

Underwood is probably best known for his morning show where he would chat with people from the community about upcoming events and happenings all over Marshall County and play music from local artists who would send him their recordings. He came to 95.9 WTWX starting in 1969, and his office looked right out onto Lake Guntersville.

“He would get here at three in the morning sometimes and the show came on at six,” Jackson said. “Bruce just had this very unique voice and Southern manner, he wasn’t like your typical DJ and people felt a real connection to him, the older folks especially loved him because he was different from anyone else on the radio.”

Underwood unfortunately had to step away from the desk around ten months ago after a fall led to advice from his doctors to rest at home. Even away from the station he never stopped working, using a home studio to record himself and send it in, keeping the station up to date. 

Jackson says that the station always hoped he would be able to make a comeback and keep going just a little longer, and that they regret that he never got to give a proper send off to his listeners. When inclement weather would hit the area, he would be on air around the clock providing updates and keeping people company through the storms like the infamous blizzards of 1993. When he passed Jackson says the station received an outpouring of condolences and sympathy from across the ten Alabama counties the station served and that posts on social media received hundreds of comments.

“You don’t realize just how many people you connect with when you do it for that long.” Jackson said. “There were people who grew up in the seventies listening to him and then their kids in the nineties listened to him, it was almost a generational thing. He didn’t miss many days, and he was how a lot of people started their day, Monday to Friday. They woke up with Bruce, he meant the world to so many people.”

Underwood was laid to rest at Crestview Cemetery on Tuesday after a service at Guntersville Church of Christ, his home church. The staff at the Sand Mountain Reporter was deeply saddened to hear about Bruce’s passing and sends condolences and prayers to his family and coworkers.