W.S. "Bill" Melton was born and raised in the Piedmont of North Carolina and grew up in Gaston County. Bill graduated East Gaston High School in 1984 and from Belmont Abbey College with a B.A. in History in 1988.

Bill was employed out of college as a police officer with the Mecklenburg County Police Department.  Bill left the Mecklenburg County Police in 1990 to join the Gaston County Police Department.

Bill has served the Gaston County Police Department as a patrolman, narcotics investigator, SWAT team member, patrol sergeant, educational service sergeant, patrol district captain, and captain of the Special Investigations Section. Bill is currently the commander of the Department's Support Service Section which oversees the Recruitment and Training Unit, the Records Unit, the Educational Services Unit, Accreditation and Victim/witness.

In 2001, Bill began writing a humor column for the Gaston Gazette strictly to aggravate his Yankee School teacher wife.  He reports he has so far been successful in that endeavor.  In the spring of 2002, Bill's column was picked up by the Hickory Daily Record and was picked up by the Monroe Enquirer Journal that Fall.  Bill's column also is also carried by the Bladen Journal and the Salisbury Post.

Bill has just entered the realm of the published author by publishing a collection of almost 70 of his first two years worth of columns in a book,  Living In A Bottle Water World- A Good Ol' Boy Speaks His Mind.

As a humorist, Bill is popular as a motivational and humor speaker.  He has served as master of ceremonies for festivals and has served as the keynote speaker for trade associations as well as at county fairs.  Bill is also popular as an after dinner speaker which he likes most of all since they usually feed him.

Bill has had a wide background, to include having served as a United Methodist minister, holding elected office, driving the big rigs, and service as volunteer fireman and volunteer lifesaving crew member.  It has been said that Bill will join anything that gives him a badge to wear or has a siren he can play with. 

Bill lives in Gaston County, and is married to Laurie Bogardus Melton, a Yankee School teacher woman.  They live in their beautiful suburban estate affectionately known as High Grass Manor with their two children, Jacob age 11, and Kathleen, age 8, and Millie, their nasty stinking dog.