Lewis Grizzard was thoroughly Southern, and, to many, he gave voice to the region through changing times.
Born at Fort Benning on Oct. 20, 1946, Grizzard would, after graduating from the University of Georgia, become sports editor for the Atlanta Journal. After an unhappy stint at the Chicago Sun-Times in the mid-1970s, he would return to Atlanta and spend more than 15 years writing a column for the Atlanta Constitution, documenting, and frequently lamenting, the changes that were rehaping our region. He made readers laugh. He made them pine for a fondly recalled past. Sometimes, with tender remembrances, he made them cry.
And he made them mad. He was a pioneer in the realm of political incorrectness. Humor was his medium, but not everyone was laughing.
Upon his death in 1994, the AJC editorial board wrote: "To readers across the nation, Lewis Grizzard was Atlanta, The Journal, and the South. In the tradition of Southern humorists, he found in the distinctiveness of the South, its people and their ordinary lives and pleasures the material to entertain a nation. His genuine delight, and the humor he found, in the passions and rituals of the Southern town — family, food and football — anchored us all to the memories we cherish and the places we wanted to be. Even as he reminded us that the South is changing incomprehensibly fast, his wit offered safe harbor from our fears that the region we love is losing its uniqueness."
A congential heart defect finally resisted one final effort to repair it on March 20, 1994. Had he survived his troublesome heart, Grizzard would have been 70 years old on Oct. 20, 2016.
Here are a few of readers' favorite columns, a handful of the many published in the days following his death, along with a remembrance by late AJC sports editor Furman Bisher and a gallery of photos:
A special woman: For a mother on her day
The good life: Me in my Guccis
On food: I ate breakfast — and lived
Southern ways: Chicago-like weather chills urge to gloat
My Mama's pain over; I still hurt
Thank God, we now can preserve blessed Vidalias
Photos: Remembering Lewis Grizzard
Bill Oberst reads one of Grizzard's classic columns about UGA football