New Georgia Encyclopedia: Furman Bisher (b. 1918)

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Furman Bisher (b. 1918)

Furman

Furman Bisher

Bisher, a well-regarded sportswriter and editor, has been the Atlanta Journal-Constitution sports editor, a Sporting News columnist, and the contributor of hundreds of articles for Sports Illustrated, the Saturday Evening Post, and many other national magazines. Author of several books, including a biography of baseball great Hank Aaron, Bisher was named in a 1961 Time article as one of the nation's five best columnists. He has covered the Masters Tournament in Augusta, every Kentucky Derby since 1950, and every Super Bowl but the first. He watched the first NASCAR race as an editor in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he is credited with helping to bring the Braves baseball team, Atlanta's first professional sports team, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Atlanta. Bisher chronicles the Braves acquisition in his second book, Miracle in Atlanta (1966).

James Furman Bisher was born on November 4, 1918, in Denton, North Carolina, to Mamie Morris and Chisholm Bisher. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he began his career at the Lumberton Voice in North Carolina in 1938. In 1954 he married Montyne Harrell, with whom he had three sons. Eventually the couple divorced, and Bisher married Lynda Landon in 1991.

Bisher

Furman Bisher

became an editor in 1940 for the Charlotte News, where he worked for the rest of the decade, excepting four years of military service during World War II (1941-45). In 1950 he left the Charlotte News to become sports editor for the Atlanta Constitution. In 1957 he joined the Atlanta Journal and the Sunday Journal-Constitution as sports editor and columnist, and he continues to write for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He also became a columnist for the Sporting News.

Over the years Bisher scored a number of memorable journalistic coups. His first occurred in 1949, when "Shoeless" Joe Jackson gave Bisher and Sport Magazine his only interview since 1919, the year Jackson was ousted from baseball in the "Black Sox" scandal.

Bisher played golf with Bobby Jones and Gene Sarazen, among many others. Covering the Masters in 1954, he watched in awe as amateur Billy Joe Patton "laughed his way" through the course, shooting a hole in one on his way to nearly snatching the green jacket from Sam Snead. Patton lost by one stroke, and Bisher later recounted the golfer's wistful comment, Bisher's favorite golf quote in all his years of writing about the sport: "I could have handled the fame, I could

Grizzard and Bisher

have handled the money. But I doubt if I could have handled the women."

Bisher's many awards and accolades include membership in the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame, the International Golf Writers Hall of Fame, and the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, as well as the Red Smith Award for contributions to journalism. His work has been anthologized in Best Sports Stories of the Year twenty-three times; he won the PGA Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award in 1996.

Suggested Reading

Furman Bisher, The Furman Bisher Collection (Dallas, Tex.: Taylor Publishing, 1989).

Furman Bisher, The Masters: Augusta Revisted, an Intimate View (Birmingham, Ala.: Oxmoor House, 1976).

Furman Bisher, Strange but True Baseball Stories (New York: Random House, [1966]).

Furman Bisher, With a Southern Exposure (New York: T. Nelson, [1962]).

Lewis Grizzard, "Toast to Bisher Stirs Bittersweet Memories," Atlanta Constitution, October 19, 1990.

Josh Riley, "Furman Bisher," in The Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 171, Twentieth-Century American Sportswriters, ed. Richard Orodenker (Detroit: Gale, 1996), 12-22.

Krista Reese, Decatur

Published 10/19/2006

Printable Version

•Lewis Grizzard (1946-1994)

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