Whether on the air or off, Bill Gamel made people feel like they mattered.
For Jeffrey Rupp, who helped start WCBI’s Midday segment as Gamel’s co-anchor, that was most clear in the trust he and Gamel built over 15 years of lively, mostly unscripted television.
“That type of bond really strengthened us not just as friends, but also on the air,” Rupp told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “There was nothing that could happen while we were on set … that I didn’t feel like he had my back 24/7. That is a real luxury to have in a friend and a coworker.”
Gamel, 80, a news and sports anchor who spent nearly four decades in broadcast, passed away Tuesday. Much of his career was spent at WCBI, where he helped launch Midday and Sunrise, two segments that remain a part of the station’s daily lineup. He retired in 2017.
Thinking back on when he was hired to co-anchor Midday, Rupp remembers his pairing with Gamel as the station’s attempt to balance his own “young and brash” energy with someone who could act, as Rupp puts it, like “the adult in the room.” But it didn’t quite work out that way.
Gamel, Rupp said, was quietly mischievous, and the two fed off each other in ways that made memorable moments on the show.
“We had to know each other so well on the air and became so close that he knew exactly what buttons to push that would sort of send me down the path to the point where the phone would ring and people would call up fussing about how goofy we were,” Rupp said.
It wouldn’t be the last time the pair brought out the best in each other.
Once when he and his wife were looking for a new church, Rupp remembers walking into one to find Gamel and his wife, Susan, sitting in a back pew, where he immediately sat down next to them.
The next week, Rupp returned to that same seat beside Gamel.
“My wife literally walked to the front of the church and – in front of God and everyone – turned around, pointed at me and made me move to a pew up front because we had carried on so much the week before the service,” Rupp remembers.
While he may not have fit the typical mold expected of a broadcaster – more introverted than most with little interest in the usual “perks and attention” that come with the job, Rupp said – Gamel’s skills in the studio were undeniable.
“He was really good at broadcasting, and he enjoyed the craft,” Rupp said. “He could have gone to a much bigger market. His skillset was well above the North Mississippi market, but he was not a city boy. And he was so beloved in the area.”
‘Say it like you mean it’
That was the version of Gamel – the well-known, seasoned broadcaster – who Aundrea Self faced when she first interviewed to be producer at the station.
Though she had already been interning for WCBI, her interactions with Gamel up until then were limited to passing each other in the station, some segments she starred in as a high school student, and of course, the many years she spent watching him from her own home.
“When I got there for the interview in his office, Bill was sitting in there,” Self told The Dispatch on Wednesday. “I just thought I was going to lose my mind. I’m like 22, 23 years old trying to keep my cool.”
After a couple of years, Self moved into the co-anchor position for Sunrise, where she and Gamel became one of the station’s most recognizable duos. They were, by Self’s own description, “an unlikely pair.”
“Here you’ve got a … 25-year-old Black girl (and) a 50-something-year-old white man, with a generation between them,” she said. “He had experience. I had very little on-air experience. But right away, he really did make me feel comfortable because I think he felt that I was nervous.”
In those moments, when Self was worried she may fumble a pronunciation or say the wrong words, Gamel always gave her the same advice: “Just say it with conviction. Say it like you mean it.”
“That phrase … throughout my career has stuck with me, but the actual meaning behind it has stuck with me for so many other things in my life,” Self said. “Just do what you do with conviction and do it from your heart, and people will believe you.
Much like that early advice, Gamel remained a steady presence in Self’s life. He was among the first people she called when her husband proposed. Every year on her birthday, Gamel sent a message. Each anniversary, he sent another. He never missed.
“What people saw on the air as us laughing and ribbing each other, it was real, true friendship,” she said. “It didn’t turn off when the lights and camera turned off. It was genuine.”
When Self left WCBI in 2024, the three former coworkers – Gamel, Rupp and Self – started going to lunch together. They had plans for another meal together when Gamel passed away.
“The other thing he taught me really is to just be yourself. … Just be who you are, and that’s what people like,” Self said. “That’s what he was so good at. He was just sort of effortlessly himself, and that’s what endeared him to people.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
