Lewis Grizzard with his beloved typewriter and coffee can filled with money that he wrote about in his columns. Grizzard was an American writer and humorist, known for his Southern demeanor and commentary on the American South. Although he spent his early career as a newspaper sports writer and editor, becoming the sports editor of the Atlanta Journal at age 23, he is much better known for his humorous newspaper columns in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a popular stand-up comedian and lecturer.
Grizzard was born in Fort Benning, Georgia.[1][2] His father, Lewis Grizzard, Sr., was a soldier in the United States Army who served in both World War II and the Korean War, and was a sole survivor of a Chinese attack that wiped out his platoon. Lewis Sr. left his wife Christine, a school teacher, when Lewis Jr. was young, and mother and son moved in with Christine's parents in Moreland, Georgia, where Lewis spent the rest of his childhood. Grizzard recounted his often frustrating relationship with his father in My Daddy Was a Pistol and I'm a Son of a Gun, and blamed his father's difficulties in civilian life on what at the time was called "battle fatigue" and is now called post-traumatic stress disorder, saying, "Daddy came home from his second war" (the Korean War) "a complete mess, the Army did nothing to help him, and he died young." He began his writing early, publishing stories of his Little League team in the nearby Newnan Times-Herald, Newnan, Georgia. Grizzard attended the University of Georgia in Athens, where he was a member of the Sigma Pi fraternity and Gridiron Secret Society. During his time in Athens, he became an avid Georgia Bulldogs fan. He studied journalism, but he shunned the school newspaper in favor of the independent Athens Daily News. Before graduating with an bachelor's degree in journalism Grizzard moved on to Atlanta, joining the Atlanta Journal, and becoming the youngest-ever executive sports editor of the Journal at the age of 23. The executive editor of the Journal, Jim Minter, said that had Grizzard stayed there, he would be remembered today as one of the great newspaper editors of the 20th century.[citation needed] His time there included the Marshall University football team tragedy and the Journal's coverage of Hank Aaron's 715th home run. Grizzard then left to become the executive sports editor at the Chicago Sun-Times. He later recalled this as the most miserable period of his life.
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Location: Atlanta, GA
Photo credit: © Ken Hawkins / Alamy / Afripics
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