Georgia Writers Hall of Fame
The Georgia Writers Hall of Fame welcomed Furman into their hallowed halls in November 2018.
He was introduced by the great novelist Terry Kay. |
Remarks by Terry Kay about Furman Bisher
When the Beatles came to Atlanta in 1965, I was the entertainment editor of The Atlanta Journal, and was given the task of organizing the paper’s coverage of their concert. My memory tells me that I selected three other reporters as my ‘team.’ We also hired a teenager who was afflicted with Beatlemania, meaning she knew all that had been publicly revealed about the group. I needed her. I did not know Ringo from Paul, George from John, Michelle from Yesterday. She considered me culturally damaged.
The concert was held in Atlanta Fulton County Stadium and the press conference – which was better attended than many of the Braves games of that time – took place in the stadium’s tunnel. I strategically positioned my team of writers at various vantage points not to miss a syllable of Beatle utterance. In the journalistic definition of coverage, we had it covered.
And then I looked across the tunnel and saw Furman Bisher taking notes. I said to the reporter nearest me, “You can put away your pen.” He asked, “Why?” I pointed to Furman. “Bisher just entered the room,” I said.
The following day, Furman’s column elevated the writing of celebrity news as only Bisher could. It was a mild tease of the hysteria that trailed after the Beatles like a shrieking madness. It was clever and funny. I remember this line: There were so many flashbulbs going off, it sounded liked a giant egg fry. And that is exactly how flashbulbs from the old cameras sounded – a sizzling with each flash.
That moment is memorable to me, but it was not unique. I have never known anyone who worked for, or with, Furman Bisher who could not tell you such a tale -- from copy boys to the giants of the world of sport and business.
In the program, you will see an abbreviated biography of his life. It’s a small stone skipped a few feet across a shallow pond. I can tell you there is a much larger story where the stone is a boulder and the pond an ocean – a story telling how he made it out of Denton, North Carolina, to become one of the most renowned sportswriters of the last century, along with such luminaries as Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Shirley Povich, Jim Murray, Damon Runyon, Dick Young, Murray Olderman and Ring Lardner.
If you want to follow that boulder-skip across the ocean, Google the name. It will tell you of his history – book subjects and titles, awards and honors, the sort of information that is tagged to one’s life like the long tail of an elaborate kite. It’s impressive reading. I promise.
The purpose of this occasion, however, is to honor his remarkable gift as a writer, a maker of words that both dazzled and challenged readers. I am shamelessly biased in favor of the man, for I learned the intricacies of writing from him, working in the sports department of The Atlanta Journal. I knew from the first week of employment, in March of 1962, that he intuitively understood more about the craft than the rest of us. I began copying his columns each day, word for word – not seeking to steal his language, but to feel it, to sense the rhythm, to wish for the magic of absorbing through my fingertips what he had left on the page. I think it’s no different than an art student copying the brush strokes of a Monet or a Rembrandt or a da Vinci. Certainly, it’s better to learn from a master than from a fellow amateur.
He was a demanding employer. There was no slacking on any story, from bowling leagues to major leagues. And he caught errors like a robot programmed for the task. Once, on a Saturday evening, we determined to produce a perfect section, and every staff member working that night read and re-read the final edition, checking for the slightest mistake. Satisfied we had missed nothing, we had the section re-plated and a copy of the paper was slipped into the mailbox of his residence in the dark of night. On Monday, he came into the office and dropped the sports section on the copy desk. Circled in red was the box score of some minor game where the math was off by one number. “Pay attention,” was his admonition. Our greatest fear was having him poke his head out of his office door, fix his gaze on one of us, and utter these terrifying words: “Got a minute?” It was much the same as, “Do you have any last words?”
But, again, his conduct as an employer is not the issue here. It’s the writing that matters. Even those people who disagreed angrily with him freely admitted that his writing was superior. For those of us who worked for him – the Bisher Boys – it was a matter of awe. Lee Walburn, the retired editor of Atlanta Magazine, uses these words: He taught that no word was insignificant, that each cuts with a different blade, sculpts with a different chisel. He taught words as a religion. Jim Minter, the retired executive editor of the Journal-Constitution – who knew Furman better than anyone – has written of him: "He put more quality words on newsprint than any other writer in the last half of the 20th century." For those who understand the demands of writing, it is not an exaggeration.
If you want proof of Walburn’s or Minter’s take on him, read the Thanksgiving columns. For the purity of writing, nothing in modern journalism is the equal of Bisher’s I’m Thankful for . . . reflections. A lot of people have mimicked the style, mostly making a mockery of it. A few come pleasingly close – such as Loran Smith’s column in 2017 – but none have matched it, for in those columns he was writing lyrics for the music of tender memories. Only the gifted hear that music.
After I began writing novels, I would occasionally pester him about trying the genre, but he had no interest. He was a sportswriter. That’s what he wanted to be. Yet, I always believed he could have been the John Steinbeck of the south had he written fiction, for he had the curiosity and the drive and the God-placed talent of a Steinbeck – or a Wolfe, or a Jesse Stuart, or a Robert Penn Warren.
But he wanted to write about Shoeless Joe Jackson and Norm Van Brocklin, about Ted Williams and Henry Aaron, Ty Cobb and Arnold Palmer, Gorgeous George and Babe Zaharias, about small-town coaches of young dreamers, about heroes and has-beens, about sandlot fields for Little Leaguers and massive stadiums for the wealthy. To watch him work was humbling. He would close the door to his office and write until his shirt was soaked with perspiration and his face flushed with intensity. He did not slap together sentences; he created them out of purpose and intellect and passion.
He wrote daily columns and magazine pieces and books – more words than any existing member of this Hall of Fame – and, as Lee Walburn has noted, took early retirement from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the age of 90, only because the deal was too sweet. Yet, he still wrote, still contributed. Writing was his addiction and the pleasure of it never left him.
I review the list of people already inducted into this society of writers, and I marvel at the legacy of their words – the depth of persuasive thinking, the poetry of imagination – involving the joy and deprivation of the human experience, words that paint portraits of who we have been and who we are and who we will become. For years, I have believed Furman Bisher belonged in the forefront of this company because of his unique artistry in using a 1948 Royal typewriter to reveal stories of our place in this world. That those stories are found on fields of play does not diminish them. Just the opposite: it imbues them with the spirit of dreams and the unbridled energy of belonging.
The purpose of the Georgia Writers’ Hall of Fame, first and foremost, is the celebration of quality writing as it reflects our culture and our heritage. Over time, the candidates for consideration have ranged from the mediocrity of many to the magnificence of the few. This year, with this ceremony, there should be no wavering: one of the magnificent few joins us, for Furman Bisher just entered the room – one day after his 100th birthdate.
The concert was held in Atlanta Fulton County Stadium and the press conference – which was better attended than many of the Braves games of that time – took place in the stadium’s tunnel. I strategically positioned my team of writers at various vantage points not to miss a syllable of Beatle utterance. In the journalistic definition of coverage, we had it covered.
And then I looked across the tunnel and saw Furman Bisher taking notes. I said to the reporter nearest me, “You can put away your pen.” He asked, “Why?” I pointed to Furman. “Bisher just entered the room,” I said.
The following day, Furman’s column elevated the writing of celebrity news as only Bisher could. It was a mild tease of the hysteria that trailed after the Beatles like a shrieking madness. It was clever and funny. I remember this line: There were so many flashbulbs going off, it sounded liked a giant egg fry. And that is exactly how flashbulbs from the old cameras sounded – a sizzling with each flash.
That moment is memorable to me, but it was not unique. I have never known anyone who worked for, or with, Furman Bisher who could not tell you such a tale -- from copy boys to the giants of the world of sport and business.
In the program, you will see an abbreviated biography of his life. It’s a small stone skipped a few feet across a shallow pond. I can tell you there is a much larger story where the stone is a boulder and the pond an ocean – a story telling how he made it out of Denton, North Carolina, to become one of the most renowned sportswriters of the last century, along with such luminaries as Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Shirley Povich, Jim Murray, Damon Runyon, Dick Young, Murray Olderman and Ring Lardner.
If you want to follow that boulder-skip across the ocean, Google the name. It will tell you of his history – book subjects and titles, awards and honors, the sort of information that is tagged to one’s life like the long tail of an elaborate kite. It’s impressive reading. I promise.
The purpose of this occasion, however, is to honor his remarkable gift as a writer, a maker of words that both dazzled and challenged readers. I am shamelessly biased in favor of the man, for I learned the intricacies of writing from him, working in the sports department of The Atlanta Journal. I knew from the first week of employment, in March of 1962, that he intuitively understood more about the craft than the rest of us. I began copying his columns each day, word for word – not seeking to steal his language, but to feel it, to sense the rhythm, to wish for the magic of absorbing through my fingertips what he had left on the page. I think it’s no different than an art student copying the brush strokes of a Monet or a Rembrandt or a da Vinci. Certainly, it’s better to learn from a master than from a fellow amateur.
He was a demanding employer. There was no slacking on any story, from bowling leagues to major leagues. And he caught errors like a robot programmed for the task. Once, on a Saturday evening, we determined to produce a perfect section, and every staff member working that night read and re-read the final edition, checking for the slightest mistake. Satisfied we had missed nothing, we had the section re-plated and a copy of the paper was slipped into the mailbox of his residence in the dark of night. On Monday, he came into the office and dropped the sports section on the copy desk. Circled in red was the box score of some minor game where the math was off by one number. “Pay attention,” was his admonition. Our greatest fear was having him poke his head out of his office door, fix his gaze on one of us, and utter these terrifying words: “Got a minute?” It was much the same as, “Do you have any last words?”
But, again, his conduct as an employer is not the issue here. It’s the writing that matters. Even those people who disagreed angrily with him freely admitted that his writing was superior. For those of us who worked for him – the Bisher Boys – it was a matter of awe. Lee Walburn, the retired editor of Atlanta Magazine, uses these words: He taught that no word was insignificant, that each cuts with a different blade, sculpts with a different chisel. He taught words as a religion. Jim Minter, the retired executive editor of the Journal-Constitution – who knew Furman better than anyone – has written of him: "He put more quality words on newsprint than any other writer in the last half of the 20th century." For those who understand the demands of writing, it is not an exaggeration.
If you want proof of Walburn’s or Minter’s take on him, read the Thanksgiving columns. For the purity of writing, nothing in modern journalism is the equal of Bisher’s I’m Thankful for . . . reflections. A lot of people have mimicked the style, mostly making a mockery of it. A few come pleasingly close – such as Loran Smith’s column in 2017 – but none have matched it, for in those columns he was writing lyrics for the music of tender memories. Only the gifted hear that music.
After I began writing novels, I would occasionally pester him about trying the genre, but he had no interest. He was a sportswriter. That’s what he wanted to be. Yet, I always believed he could have been the John Steinbeck of the south had he written fiction, for he had the curiosity and the drive and the God-placed talent of a Steinbeck – or a Wolfe, or a Jesse Stuart, or a Robert Penn Warren.
But he wanted to write about Shoeless Joe Jackson and Norm Van Brocklin, about Ted Williams and Henry Aaron, Ty Cobb and Arnold Palmer, Gorgeous George and Babe Zaharias, about small-town coaches of young dreamers, about heroes and has-beens, about sandlot fields for Little Leaguers and massive stadiums for the wealthy. To watch him work was humbling. He would close the door to his office and write until his shirt was soaked with perspiration and his face flushed with intensity. He did not slap together sentences; he created them out of purpose and intellect and passion.
He wrote daily columns and magazine pieces and books – more words than any existing member of this Hall of Fame – and, as Lee Walburn has noted, took early retirement from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the age of 90, only because the deal was too sweet. Yet, he still wrote, still contributed. Writing was his addiction and the pleasure of it never left him.
I review the list of people already inducted into this society of writers, and I marvel at the legacy of their words – the depth of persuasive thinking, the poetry of imagination – involving the joy and deprivation of the human experience, words that paint portraits of who we have been and who we are and who we will become. For years, I have believed Furman Bisher belonged in the forefront of this company because of his unique artistry in using a 1948 Royal typewriter to reveal stories of our place in this world. That those stories are found on fields of play does not diminish them. Just the opposite: it imbues them with the spirit of dreams and the unbridled energy of belonging.
The purpose of the Georgia Writers’ Hall of Fame, first and foremost, is the celebration of quality writing as it reflects our culture and our heritage. Over time, the candidates for consideration have ranged from the mediocrity of many to the magnificence of the few. This year, with this ceremony, there should be no wavering: one of the magnificent few joins us, for Furman Bisher just entered the room – one day after his 100th birthdate.