Lewis Grizzard Biography Quotes 9 Report mistakes

9 Quotes
Occup.	Writer
From	USA
Born	October 20, 1946 Fort Benning, Georgia, U.S.
Died	March 20, 1994 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Aged	47 years

Early Life and Education
Lewis McDonald Grizzard Jr. was born in 1946 at Fort Benning, Georgia, a military post whose transience contrasted with the steadiness he later celebrated in small-town Southern life. He grew up in Moreland, Georgia, where the rhythms of church suppers, front-porch talk, and Friday night football lodged deep in his memory. Those impressions became the wellspring of a voice that mixed affection, mischief, and barbed common sense. At the University of Georgia in Athens he studied journalism and wrote for the student paper, sharpening an ear for cadence and a knack for turning everyday frustrations into sly cultural observation. He fell hard for the Bulldogs, absorbing the lore attached to coach Vince Dooley and the gravelly play-by-play of broadcaster Larry Munson, touchstones he would later invoke as shorthand for the way a region loves its teams and its traditions.

Early Career and the Chicago Detour
Grizzard started young in newspapers, working in Georgia newsrooms and rising quickly through sports desks where deadlines were tight and wit was currency. His leap came when he became sports editor at the Chicago Sun-Times while still in his early twenties, among the youngest to hold such a job at a major daily. Chicago gave him a big stage but also taught him how far from home he felt. The wind off the lake, the scale of the city, and the sharp-elbowed pace of big-league journalism honed his professionalism, yet the distance from the South that fed his voice proved difficult. The experience left him with stories about press boxes, coaches, and the oddball fraternity of sportswriters, material he would later rework into rueful, comic reflections on ambition and belonging.

Return to Atlanta and a Columnist's Voice
He returned to Georgia and settled into the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where his column shifted from box scores to broader life. Editors such as Jim Minter gave him space to roam, and readers rewarded the mix of humor, nostalgia, contrarian streak, and occasional bite. He wrote about barbecue, romance, airports, politics as a spectator sport, and the stubborn loyalties of a people who call soda "Coke" and mean all of it. The column was syndicated and picked up by papers across the South and beyond, spreading his voice well outside Georgia. In a newsroom with distinct voices such as Celestine Sibley and sportswriting legend Furman Bisher, Grizzard carved out a lane that was not quite op-ed and not quite stand-up, but something like front-porch commentary filtered through a typewriter.

Books, Stage, and a Southern Brand of Humor
As his readership grew, Grizzard turned columns and new material into best-selling books with titles that became punchlines in their own right. Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself captured his blend of mourning and mockery about modern life. If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground chronicled the tug of home that pulled him south from Chicago. They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat used self-deprecation to make medical trauma both bearable and funny. When My Love Returns from the Ladies Room, Will I Be Too Old to Care? played with the battlefield of relationships he mined for truth and laughs. He took his show on the road with one-man performances that blended readings, stand-up rhythms, and audience Q&A, a live extension of the intimacy readers felt with his column.

Themes, Relationships, and Public Persona
Grizzard's writing returned again and again to family, football, and the language of the South. He drew affectionate portraits of his mother and offered complicated sketches of his father's military life and absences. He joked about his own misadventures in love, turning breakups and bewilderment into running gags. Fans remember his references to beloved dogs and to game days in Athens, where invoking Vince Dooley or the voice of Larry Munson served as a shorthand hymn. He was at ease bantering with coaches and writers, and he stood shoulder to shoulder with colleagues who understood that the strongest humor is often rooted in loss and loyalty. For readers, the "people around him" often felt like neighbors: editors who reined him in, friends who egged him on, and audiences who greeted him as kin when he took the stage in small theaters and civic auditoriums.

Illness and Resolve
Behind the jokes lay a series of serious heart problems that began relatively young. Grizzard faced multiple surgeries, including valve replacements, and he turned the ordeal into material that invited readers to laugh at fear without underestimating it. The title They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat showed his method: push the metaphor to the edge, then use humor to look straight at mortality. He traveled when he could, wrote when he was strong, and kept his routine with the defiant stubbornness of a beat reporter on deadline.

Death and Legacy
Lewis Grizzard died in 1994 in Atlanta after complications related to heart surgery, closing a career that had lasted barely two decades but reshaped what a newspaper humor column could be in the modern South. He left behind a stack of books, countless columns, and audio from shows where the cadences of his voice did as much work as his punchlines. In the years after his death, his hometown and his readers preserved his memory through reprints, local exhibits, and stories passed across tailgates and kitchen tables. Within the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's storied lineage of voices, he occupies a distinct place: the man who could tease his region mercilessly and still be embraced by it, because the teasing felt like love. For Georgia fans filing into Sanford Stadium, for small-town readers who recognized the settings of his jokes, and for editors who knew the power of a clean sentence anchored by a stubborn opinion, Lewis Grizzard remained what he had always set out to be: a writer who sounded like someone you already knew.

Our collection contains 9 quotes who is written by Lewis, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Motivational - Leadership - Honesty & Integrity - Pet Love.

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