BY JOHN ATKINSON
FOR THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — You meet people in a number of ways. Through school or work. Through church or friends. Through speeding tickets or flat tires.
My friendship with Woody Ross began through an index card on a bulletin board.
Always one to do more with less, Woody had planted the index card right there between the “Roommate Needed” and “Used Sofa for Sale” signs on the bulletin board at the old Southern Union on Waverly Parkway.
It was circa 1988 and Woody needed a weekend DJ at WJHO. I knew how to spell deejay. And I actually listened to 1400 AM as a pre-teen to win records. But I didn’t know one thing about being on-air.
So, I applied the next day.
After the in-person interview, Woody had me do an audio test by reading a commercial. The desperate fellow hired me anyway. He coached me for a few days and then handed me the 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. shift on Friday nights. Couldn’t embarrass him or myself too much with those hours.
Little did I know Woody had more important things to worry about. Namely, his seven-year-old son, Brandon.
Woody and his wife, Sheila, worked across Pepperell Parkway from each other for years. Woody as a deejay, newsman and salesman at WJHO and Sheila as an RN at EAMC. They had two sons, Brandon and Daniel, who were born about two years apart.
They were normal playful sons right up until Brandon was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) — the same disease that recently took the life of Tatiana Schlossberg, JFK’s granddaughter.
Woody had told Sheila years earlier “If you will marry me, I promise I will provide for you and our family.” He was put to the ultimate test in that moment and didn’t flinch.
Through the power of friendships, determination and a few radio newscasts, Woody and his family had everything they needed.
Two Auburn students who ran marathons set up a “Run for Brandon” fundraiser. Businesses and churches joined in. It was the fundraising equivalent of “Run, Forrest, Run,” and it took the Rosses all the way to Seattle.
Even after Woody and Daniel returned three months later, Woody’s resourcefulness continued. He and Daniel recorded messages to Brandon and Sheila on cassette tapes and mailed them to the upper northwest. Sheila and Brandon returned the love. This went on for nearly a year.
It turned out that unrelenting love ran in the family.
There was just one-seventh of a cell difference between Brandon and Daniel, so Daniel, at age five, donated bone marrow to Brandon. He did it again at age six. He didn’t get a chance at age seven as Brandon died less than a month after turning nine.
Like Woody, and Sheila for that matter, Daniel’s selflessness continued through the years. He was a teenage volunteer at EAMC in high school and then served our country through the Army National Guard and the U.S. Marines, including two deployments to Iraq and one to Afghanistan.
As for Woody, he did three tours of a different kind. He started at WJHO in 1967 and remained there until about 1994. Opelika pre-mayor Gary Fuller then lured him over to WKKR, WMXA and the roughly 37 other radio stations socked away in that 1200-square-foot conglomerate on Veterans Parkway.
After semi-retiring in 2015, Woody decided to dust off his salesman shoes a short time later to sell ad space for The Opelika Observer (now known as The Observer).
Sheila reminded him that he worked in news-talk radio for 48 years. “You don’t know anything about newspaper sales,” she stated. Woody held firm: “News is news!” He stayed with The Observer for 10 years until his health began to decline sharply. His body was ravaged by Parkinson’s Disease, dementia and diabetes.
A friend throughout many of those years was John Bodiford, meeting first at WJHO in 1972.
“Woody was one-of-a-kind,” John said. “He was super generous in our years together at Kicker, which was probably a reflection of the generosity he and his family felt when Brandon was in Seattle. I never met anyone who had a bad thing to say about Woody. I mean, there might’ve been somebody, somewhere but I never met ‘em.”
Woody died on Dec. 11, 2025, a day after celebrating his 76th birthday with an iced coffee from Sheila and Daniel. Just as Woody promised, they were family together till the end.
