The radio voice of Johnston County now has a highway named in his honor

For decades, Carl Lamm was the voice of Johnston County. From behind the mic at WMPM and later WTSB in Smithfield, he shared local news and weather, birthdays and anniversaries, gossip and church announcements, interviews with sports and music stars and updates from the Smithfield Tobacco Market, all between the old-time gospel and country songs he loved.

It was a style of broadcasting that harked back to the 1940s, when Lamm got his start at a station in Rocky Mount and AM radio bound a community together.

“The world changes every day, but WMPM and Carl don’t,” Allen Wellons, a Smithfield attorney and former state senator, told The News & Observer in 2007. “He’s the thing we in Johnston County have in common.”

Lamm was 92 when he signed off for the last time five years ago. His career covered 72 years of continuous broadcasting, a national record, his family thinks.

To honor Lamm and keep his memory alive, the Smithfield Town Council asked the N.C. Department of Transportation to name a section of Interstate 95 in Johnston County the Carl Lamm Highway. The state Board of Transportation approved the designation this week.

Lamm, now 97 and in failing health, couldn’t attend the board’s meeting, but his daughter spoke. Lynda Lamm Carroll said her father had interviewed governors, senators, Major League Baseball stars and country music legends such as Johnny Cash and Minnie Pearl.

“And he felt very comfortable with those people,” Carroll told the board. “He also walks and talks with farmers, everyday people listening to him on the radio, his loyal listeners, which he also loved.”

Lamm became fascinated with radio as a kid, impersonating the people he heard on the air at the breakfast table. He was 16 when he got to fill in as an emcee on a station in Rocky Mount during World War II. After two years in the Navy, he got his first broadcasting job in 1947.

In an interview with The N&O in 2002, Lamm described those glory days of radio.

“You can’t imagine how big radio was prior to TV,” he said. “It was incredibly exciting just after World War II. And you really established a good rapport with your listeners back in that day and time. I had people write and tell me that they put a plate at the table for me every morning, like I was part of the family.”

Lamm tried to maintain that rapport with his audience throughout his career.

More than 60 years of station ownership

In 1958, he became co-owner of WMPM in Smithfield, and it became the family business. Wife Marjorie answered the phones and kept the books, while son Mickey (named for Lamm’s favorite baseball player and friend Mickey Mantle) became news director. Carl and Mickey switched from WMPM to WTSB in 2007. The Lamms sold the station to Truth Broadcasting when he retired.

A devout Christian who taught Sunday school for more than 50 years, Lamm played only clean music, “with melody, harmony and rhythm,” he once said. Gospel and old-time country. No dirty words, drinking or sex.

And Lamm kept in touch with his audience, whether in person at a local diner or the tobacco warehouses, or on the air. For his daily birthday greetings, he kept a list, adding babies as they were born and crossing out names as people died.

Since the 1920s, the state has named hundreds of roads, bridges and interchanges after people, usually politicians, business leaders or those killed in service to country or community. The State Highway Patrol is in the process of seeing that every trooper who died in the line of duty since the patrol’s founding in 1929 has a road or bridge named for them.

But a growing number of the honorees made their marks in the arts or athletics, including Andy Griffith, James Taylor, Dean Smith, Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski. Earlier this year, the state agreed to name a section of I-40 in Johnston County the Jimmy Capps Highway, honoring the session guitarist from Benson who played on some of country music’s biggest hits.

The Carl Lamm Highway will run between mile markers 88 and 92 on I-95, roughly between Smithfield and Four Oaks, near where he lives. Lamm was 80 when he made the switch to WTSB but still felt called to broadcasting.

“I believe in the strength of local radio,” he said. “It’s been mighty good to us, and we believe in giving back to the community. That’s what has made us successful, and that’s the type of radio we will bring to WTSB. It’s going to be fun, no doubt.”

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