Grizzard bike ride returning to Moreland
(Article- March 7, 2008)
During Lewis Grizzard's lifetime, Moreland nourished him.
He spent his childhood there, enjoying the camaraderie of Cureton-Cole Store, learning his multiplication tables at Moreland School and attending Sunday School at Moreland Methodist Church. The warmth of the small Southern town remained a part of his life as Grizzard grew from boy to man.
He made the daily trek from Moreland to Newnan High School and then packed his suitcase for Athens and the University of Georgia. When he became a syndicated columnist and the author of several books of Southern humor, his best work often reflected on the Moreland of his childhood.
Since Grizzard's death in 1994, a museum has been established in his memory in Moreland. Lewis Grizzard Museum in Moreland, is operated by the Lewis Grizzard Memorial Trust. Admission is free - ($1 donations are requested for the Lewis Grizzard scholarship). Dedicated to "Keeping the Memories." call (770) 304-1490 for additional information. The Grizzard Museum is open from 10 - 7, Monday through Saturday, Sunday 12 noon to 6 p.m. Please call to verify this schedule. Other hours by appointment only. Call (770) 304-1490 or Email dstamps1@bellsouth.net for more information.
Grizzard Museum gets more visitors
By ALEX McRAE
alex@newnan.com
Published in The Times-Herald January 9, 2005
Lewis Grizzard didn't get to be one of America's most loved authors by keeping things to himself. From his rocky love life, to the misadventures of his black lab "Catfish" to the turbulent times with the man who gave him a name, but not a home, Grizzard let you know how he felt.
He had a distaste for certain things, most notably Georgia Tech and mushrooms. But Grizzard loved many things, too. And he loved nothing more than the South, especially its people…and its food.
For that reason it's probably safe to assume that the man who praised biscuits, barbecue and beans in his cherished columns wouldn't mind a bit that fresh produce is helping keep his memory alive in Moreland, which Grizzard called home until the day he was buried there in March 1994.
The Lewis Grizzard Museum opened less than three years after Grizzard's death at age 47, thanks to the efforts of a group of Grizzard friends led by Dudley Stamps, Grizzard's lifelong pal and the subject of several of his columns.
The Moreland location was close to Grizzard's heart, but off the well-beaten tourist path. And while Grizzard's admirers attended the museum for a time after his passing, a lack of funds to promote the facility meant many Grizzard fans traveling just a few miles away on I-85 had no idea the museum was near.
Volunteers staffed the museum after its debut and managed to keep the facility spruced up and open to visitors several days a week. The museum, which is now owned by the Lewis Grizzard Trust, occupies half of a building donated to the trust by the family of John Abner Webb.
Located on Highway 27/29 south at the north entrance to Moreland, the 1927 era building has done duty as a gas station and John Deere tractor dealership. The half of the building not occupied by the museum has, over the years, been home to several different enterprises. Owners of the commercial side agreed to act as guides and hosts for the museum when Grizzard fans stopped in.
Over the years, some of the businesses which shared space with the museum were unable to stay open every day and it became difficult for fans to know when the museum would be open. Things finally reached a point where visitors had to call ahead to make an appointment to have someone meet them to open up.
But that changed last spring when Moreland's William Hightower opened a fruit and produce stand in the commercial side of the building. The business is open seven days a week until 6 p.m., and in addition to drawing produce lovers, is attracting more and more Grizzard fans.
Before his death Grizzard had published 18 best-selling books and his column was syndicated in 450 newspapers across the country. His personal appearances were also a huge hit. Grizzard had literally millions of fans, and those who stopped at the Moreland museum were delighted with the trove of Grizzard artifacts.
The collection includes Grizzard's Newnan High letter jacket, some of his school memorabilia and the manual typewriter he stubbornly clung to long after everyone else adopted electronic word processors.
The walls are plastered with photographs and promotional posters touting Grizzard books and tapes. Also included are several caricatures of Grizzard, including many by Grizzard's friend, Newnan artist, illustrator and sculptor David Boyd.
"I'm glad to see there's some activity out there still," said Boyd. "We're out of the mourning stage for Lewis but lots of us want to keep his memory alive, and that's a good place to do it. And," Boyd adds, " You need to say that none of that would have happened without the efforts of Dudley Stamps. He's put his heart into that project."
Stamps still cherishes the memories of his great friend and says he's glad the museum is once again attracting tourists from all over. "We've always had plenty of interest," Stamps says, "but we just had trouble getting volunteers to keep it open. Now the visitors are coming back."
Christopher Goodman, who operates the produce and fruit business for Hightower, says that at age 17 he's too young to have been a Grizzard fan. But he can attest there are plenty out there.
Goodman says a week doesn't pass without a Grizzard fan or two dropping by to savor the sweet memories of the man who made millions of folks look forward to the next day's newspaper.
"Sometimes they'll see the produce and stop and be surprised to find out the museum's here," says Goodman. " And sometimes they'll stop for the museum and be surprised at the fresh fruit and vegetables. It's a good deal for everybody."
Over the Christmas period, sales of Grizzard tapes and memorabilia were so good the shelves are now bare. New materials should be delivered before the first of two scheduled tour groups arrives later this month, according to Stamps.
The museum guest book shows over 100 visitors have stopped in since Thanksgiving, with ten so far in 2005. Visitors are from as close as Grantville and as far away as Richmond, Virginia; Sarasota, Florida; and Roseburg, Oregon.
"They just come to look at the stuff and they get to talking about what he meant to them — and they leave with a smile," says Goodman.
While the museum struggled, the Grizzard legacy was kept alive in another venue, a one-man show starring South Carolina actor Bill Oberst titled "An Evening With Lewis Grizzard."
The show was conceived by Grizzard's manager Steve Enoch and his widow, Dedra Grizzard, and is intended as a tribute to the man and his work. The show is patterned after Grizzard's wildly successful personal appearances. The first act features Oberst (clad in Grizzard's signature blue blazer and Gucci loafers) delivering a pitch-perfect retelling of some of Grizzard's best stories and one-liners. Act two is more personal and moves many in the audience to tears, especially when Oberst recites Grizzard's column about the death of his father.
The New York Times once called Grizzard "A Mark Twain for our time." Down in Moreland, he's still known as Lewis. But locals and visitors alike are glad to see the memory of Moreland's favorite son still lingers. Even if for now, that memory has to share space with a mess of mustard greens.
"We wondered about whether or not it would be good for the museum to be associated with a produce stand," says Stamps. "But you know what? We figured if Lewis were here, he'd probably say it's fine. In fact he'd probably tell somebody to cook some of it up."
Writers Hall of Fame director talks about Caldwell, Grizzard
From The Times-Herald, March 26, 2002
By W. WINSTON SKINNER
Assistant News Editor
The director of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame came to Coweta County on Monday and talked about native authors Erskine Caldwell and Lewis Grizzard.
Skip Hulett, who directs the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame program at the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Georgia Libraries in Athens, spoke to Advanced Placement English students taught by Mrs. Laurie Jackson at Newnan High School on Monday afternoon. He talked about Grizzard and Caldwell and showed several things from the university's collection including two children's books written by Alice Walker, a photocopy of a letter Caldwell wrote to his parents and a book autographed by Dr. Martin Luther King.
Caldwell, whose birthplace is now a museum in Moreland, was one of 12 authors initially selected for the Hall of Fame. The others were King, Margaret Mitchell, James Dickey, W. E. B. DuBois, Joel Chandler Harris, John O. Killens, Sidney Lanier, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor and Lillian Smith.
The initial dozen and 2000 members Walker and Byron Herbert Reece were officially inducted in December.
Several of Jackson's students reported they had visited Caldwell's birthplace on Sunday afternoon. Jackson has been interested in the Hall of Fame project and has encouraged students to nominate their favorite Georgia writers for the program.
Hulett said the Hall of Fame is part of UGA's role as a land grant university. Land grant schools provide services not only to their students but to all residents of the state.
For several years, Georgia novelist Terry Kay had been encouraging Mary Ellen Brooks, who directs the Special Collections section at the university libraries, to do something like the Georgia Writer's Hall of Fame. Kay felt there was "not enough home grown attempts in Georgia to recognize Georgia writers," Hulett said.
When Brooks first broached the idea of the program, Hulett and other staffers began looking at the approximately 100,000 books and 1,000 periodicals in the collection. "We found we had thousands of books by and about Georgians. Some famous, some you never heard of," Hulett said.
In some cases, there were many books by an author. For others, "it was their only book," Hulett said.
The Hall of Fame accepts nominations in writing and via the Internet. Nominators must use a form, which can be downloaded. Nominees must be from Georgia or must have "completed a significant amount of work while in the state," Hulett said.
After the inaugural group was selected by a panel of judges, it was decided to select two each year. Walker was the first living writer in the group, and, at one time, the idea of adding a living and deceased writer yearly was considered. Ultimately that concept was scrapped in favor of flexibility for the annual judging.
"It doesn't matter if the writer is living or dead. They pick two a year," Hulett said.
"Y'all have Erskine Caldwell," he said, speaking of the inaugural group of authors. Although Grizzard has not yet been named to the Hall of Fame, he is "the one single writer I've been asked" about most, with regard to future inclusion, Hulett said.
Among recent writers Grizzard -- "along with someone of Alice Walker's stature" -- is well known in and out of the state, Hulett said.
Hulett showed the students a photocopy of a letter Caldwell wrote to his parents 73 years ago. The elder Caldwells were living in Georgia, while their only son and his first wife, Helen, were operating a bookstore in Portland, Maine.
In the letter, Caldwell wrote about his unsuccessful efforts to get short stories published. Hulett noted that Caldwell eventually penned more than 55 titles that sold between 80 and 100 million copies.
It was an accomplishment, Hulett said, simply "to have typed that much." Caldwell "wrote right up into the 1980s when he died," Hulett said.
Caldwell's works were often considered scandalous when first published. "He wrote about people who had not been written about as he had written about them," Hulett said.
They were dispossessed people -- frequently tenant farmer families on worn out land. They were "often impoverished, often outside of the changes in America in terms of transportation, in terms of money, in terms of information -- people who were left out," Hulett said.
Hulett shared several books by Caldwell as well as an artful reprint of an eloquent broadside Caldwell wrote when his first novel, "The Bastard," was banned and copies seized. "It is one of the rarest pieces of Erskine Caldwell's writing," he said.
Caldwell's best known books were "Tobacco Road" and "God's Little Acre." "Tobacco Road" -- while it had some popularity upon its release -- gained fame and book sales when it became a play on Broadway. "One of the greatest hits of the 20th century was 'Tobacco Road,'" Hulett noted.
He pointed out that two of Caldwell's novels were published as Armed Services Editions, given to soldiers along with cigarettes and Coca-Cola during World War II and Korea. "It was an honor. There really were only about 800" titles, Hulett said.
He said items in the university's collection relating to Grizzard are quite different from those for Caldwell, since much of Grizzard's work was written for newspapers. He shared a copy of The Times-Herald Centennial Magazine with articles by Grizzard, as well as examples of early writing in The Atlanta Times and The Athens Daily News.
He read an excerpt from an early Athens sports column which used "the character voices that Lewis Grizzard became very famous for."
Among the other items Hulett shared were:
* a letter to Carson McCullars from her agent detailing a long list of periodicals that had rejected a short story. She later expanded that story, "Sucker," into one of her best-known novels, "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter."
* a paperback by Pine Mountain science fiction writer Michael Bishop, winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards.
* a proof of Killens' "Cotillion."
* a worn mid-19th century copy of Liberty County resident Robert Francis Goulding's "The Marooners." The then popular adventure series -- one of the few to include a female among its triumvirate of heroes -- was reprinted often until the end of that century but is virtually forgotten today.
* several editions of "Gone With the Wind." Hulett pointed out the greater variety of cover styles prior to 1939, afterwhich the scenes from the film -- or stylized versions of them -- predominated. He particularly noted the fine line drawings in an early Dutch edition.
* a copy of "Why We Can't Wait" by King, autographed with feeling by the author to liberal attorney Arthur Leonard Ross, who had represented anarchist Emma Goldman.
* a reprint of a DuBois book with an introduction by Killens.
Need more information on the Lewis Grizzard Museum? E-mail dstamps1@bellsouth.net
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