Overcoming
Kim Adams is not only surviving — she’s thriving
Detroit TV and radio personality Kim Adams has been to hell and back — and has the frequent flyer miles to show for it. A week before Thanksgiving, Adams was fired as midday host at WDZH-FM (98.7) as it changed formats in the middle of her shift. Then her father, William, 77, died unexpectedly on Jan. 3.
“We believe it was a massive heart attack or a pulmonary embolism — one of the two — but it was peacefully and in his sleep. So there wasn’t any suffering, but it was definitely shocking,” Adams says.
Her father was the caretaker for Adams’ mother, Cindy, who at 77 also has health problems. Overnight, Adams, who lives in Northville, became her mother’s caretaker.
On top of that, Adams — a divorced breast cancer survivor and mother of five children ages 8 to 18, whose Mississippi home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina — had to support her family without a job during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Looking for a job during a pandemic at the holidays wasn’t an ideal situation, so I threw myself into charity work,” Adams says. “I decided on Jan. 1 I was really gonna find something, then my dad died. … That really threw me for a loop.
“It was the first time any of my problems were permanent and couldn’t be fixed through hard work. Most of the things I’ve gone through, I was able to put on my big girl pants and work twice as hard to get back
to normal. But grief is something that really knocked me off kilter. … I couldn’t bring him back, no matter how hard I worked, no matter how hopeful or positive I was — I couldn’t change it, not just for myself but for my kids and my mom.”
Adams was metro Detroit’s first female meteorologist. An alumna of Mt. Clemens High School, Adams graduated with a bachelor’s degree in communications from Oakland University and a master’s in radio/ TV/film from Wayne State University. She earned her American Meteorological
Society accreditation at Ohio State University.
After the double blow of losing her job and her father, Adams borrowed strength and hope from others until she regained her own.
“I had so many people in my life getting me out of bed in the morning, making sure I kept one foot in front of the other,” she says. “If you don’t have resilience, you can borrow it from others, and they can really lift you up when you can’t do it yourself. And now, I have my resil