There are nice people in the world, and then there are people like JB Elliott.
The long time friend I made while I worked as a television news reporter and weather anchor at Birmingham’s WVTM NBC/13 during the 1980s and 1990s passed away May 11th.
To me, JB was the epitome of what it meant to be nice to others. Being generous and kind were not traits JB showed merely as the occasion dictated. Rather, they represented how he was wired. I never knew JB to be anything other than courteous, gentle and loving of those around him.
A more than 30-year employee of the National Weather Service in Birmingham, JB was relentless about providing the public with the highest quality, most detailed severe weather updates whenever he was on duty.
This was JB’s passion, and he did it well.
Always with a smile, JB Elliott would sit ready to share a story about weather or life’s adventures.
My relationship with JB came about through my time on the air as the weekend weather anchor and back-up to Chief Meteorologist James Spann at NBC/13.
Countless people throughout central Alabama undoubtedly owe their lives to JB.
Considered the voice of weather radio during severe weather outbreaks, it was JB’s printed and broadcast weather advisories that both the public and broadcasters relied upon heavily to stay safe.
JB’s valuable work came during the pre-digital era–before there was social media, instant messaging and texting, and when the severe weather updates you heard on weather radio came from the forecasters’ voices themselves, instead of the automated monotone computer voices we hear today.
Weather radio was an incredibly important tool in those days to know what was heading in your direction. At a time when tornadoes were rampaging across the area, killing Alabama residents and destroying communities, it was total reassurance to hear JB’s familiar voice, providing updates on the location and path of the storms.
When we knew severe weather would be striking our area, James Spann and I always had the same question: Will JB be on duty at the Weather Service? If the answer was yes, we could breathe easier. That’s because James and I knew that, when the storms hit, we’d be able to provide viewers with the best information we could hope for, be it about tornadoes, severe storms, flooding, hurricanes or any other threat.
JB got a huge thrill out of telling about the first time we met, which was in the aftermath of a tornado that struck Cullman county in the 1980s. I was about 30 years younger, much less wise, and hadn’t been working at the station very long.
Assigned to survey storm damage for the NWS, JB was traveling by car from spot to spot, taking pictures (he was an avid photographer), while disaster personnel, law enforcement and relief agencies converged on the scene.
As JB sometimes told it, I swooped down out of the sky and landed near him. I don’t know about having actually swooped in, but Channel 13 had assigned me to cover the event and sent me along with a videographer to the scene aboard Sky-13, the station’s Jet Ranger helicopter.
We landed in a spot only a short distance from where JB was shooting pictures, and as I got out, he was one of the first people I started talking with.
As we stood next to the helicopter, shaking hands and getting to know each other, there were a lot of things I didn’t realize that day.
I did not know at the time that I was about to begin a decades long relationship with someone I would consider as one of the kindest people I would ever meet. I did not know that I would get to know his wife, Judy, and family. I did not know I was meeting someone who would be able to tell incredible stories of tornado damage and survival. I did not know that I would see him often, including nights when I anchored the weather; between the 6pm and 10pm weekend newscasts, we would gather at the NWS Forecast Office (which, at the time, was on Oxmoor Rd. in Homewood) and share pizza, talk about weather, and learn about each other’s worlds.
I did not know at the time that I was meeting someone who would teach me not just about weather, but lessons about other things in life–specifically, about learning to be compassionate, and not to complain.
JB constantly praised my on-air work. The truth is that I was pretty clueless about being a good anchor; I knew I wasn’t half as good on-air as JB claimed, but his comments meant so much to me. They were the words of a kind soul and a true friend.
When severe weather threatened central Alabama, JB was a regular presence at James Spann’s side, helping provide life-saving information on what storms were doing and where they were heading.
He really was a southern gentleman. With JB, there was absolutely no hint of an ego. Try to draw attention to himself or brag? Never. Not once in the thirty years I knew him did I ever hear a disparaging word from him about anyone. That’s just the type of person he was. He described himself as just a country boy from Havana Junction in west Alabama’s Hale Co.
JB’s sense of humor was something his friends loved about him. He had his share of funny stories from his days at the NWS, including the time during a huge severe weather outbreak when an exhausted JB answered a phone call from a woman irate about severe storms threatening the area. He admitted that he told her if she didn’t stop bothering him that he would turn on his weather radar and set it to make a particularly nasty storm move straight toward her house. She gasped and hung up fast.
In the years following his retirement from the Weather Service, JB became a huge presence in Birmingham’s weather community, through his partnership in a weather business that he, James, three others and myself formed. JB was a constant blogger on alabamawx.com, providing regular severe weather updates to a public that had started relying on the Internet for critical weather information.
He told stories, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, that engaged people in ways that made them feel as if they knew him personally, even though they had never met. Ongoing stories about his beloved dog Miss Molly captured the hearts of people across the country. He was also a regular presence on several Birmingham radio stations, providing severe weather updates as needed.
I used to help produce the show WeatherBrains, and JB was a regular participant, usually coming up with either an interesting weather story or something to make everyone laugh.
JB talked of one day putting all his favorite stories into a book he would call Scattered Brains and Scattered Showers.
Besides the deep sadness I feel at the loss of a good, good friend, I confess to feeling a slight tinge of joy for JB, whose last few months were becoming harder.
He is not suffering.
I am so grateful to have known JB.
I will never, ever, forget him.
To do so would be an injustice to a deeply Christian family man whose character was impeccable, whose commitment to whatever he did was unwavering, and whose presence taught me ways to be a better person.
Now the rest is up to me.
—David Black