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Wednesday, June 25, 2008
6/26: Wanda Smith uses airwaves to help couple who lost sons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
V-103’s Wanda Smith (right with Frank Ski’s wife Tonya last December) last week helped raise more than $17,000 for Keisha Brown, who lost their sons on Father’s Day when both drowned in a Stone Mountain pond in their backyard.
The family had zero dollars to pay for a burial so Wanda reached out to V-103’s listeners and they came through. “I thought about my children,” Smith said. “I just wanted to help her.”
One kid Jasquez, 11, was drowning and the other Jacobie, 14, tried to save him and that boy ended up drowning, too. Tragic.
The boys were laid to rest on Saturday, June 21, 2008. New Birth Missionary Baptist Church held the home going service while Rucker Funeral Home handled the burial.
Smith said she answers calls every day on V-103 and gets sob stories galore. How does she differentiate who to help and who not to? (She obviously can’t turn the station into a beg-a-thon for the down and out.)
“I don’t know how to differentiate those just calling. Some might be fake. I don’t want that on my heart.” So she prays and “it’s like a chill that God has given me. This is the person who needs help.”
She said she often helps folks off camera and never promotes it. ‘For me, it’s from the heart. It’s not about exposure,” she said. “I love my job because I can reach out to people.”
Believe or not, Frank and Wanda are set to celebrate their 10th anniversary on V-103 this October.
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6/25: Today Show weds Atlanta couple (VIDEO included)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Most folks don’t hold weddings at 8:40 a.m. on a Wednesday.
But if NBC’s “The Today Show” is giving you a wedding for free at Rockefeller Center, televised before millions of viewers, it’s not your call.
And Atlanta couple LaDonna Bradford and Darnell Suggs, winners of NBC’s “Race to the Altar,” have zero complaints.
Viewers picked the theme (“East Meet West”), the dress (strapless fitted white bodice gown with a modest train but long veil) and bridesmaid dresses (pink, in a “Legally Blonde” sort of way).
The honeymoon pick? The Pacific island of Bora Bora, which was their first choice. And NBC held the reception at the Rainbow Room for 175 guests.
“I’m floating,” LaDonna said.
Her father died when she was eight so she was escorted down the aisle by her grandfather. “Today, my father is smiling from above,” she said during her vows.
“I stand here a better man because of you,” Darnell said during his vows.
LaDonna, a nuclear reactor inspector, and Darnell, a computer engineer, aggressively lobbied friends and acquaintances to vote for them, and actively sought media coverage. It worked.
Here’s video from the ceremony, courtesy of msnbc:
And here’s the first dance with “American Idol” third place finisher Melinda Doolittle, LaDonna’s cousin, singing “Never Felt This Way”:
