DEATH OF LEGENDARY US SPORTSWRTIER FURMAN BISHER

 

FAYETTEVILLE, Georgia — Famed American sportswriter Furman Bisher, who covered everything from major golf tournaments to horseracing's Triple Crown during a career that spanned six decades, died Sunday of a massive heart attack outside Atlanta. He was 93.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Bisher's death on its website Sunday evening (http://bit.ly/AqFVbu ). Former AJC editor Jim Minter said family members told him that Bisher had planned to watch golf at home on Sunday but complained of feeling ill, at which point his wife Lynda called 911. He died at a nearby hospital.
"He put more quality words on newsprint than any other writer in the last half of the 20th century," Minter said late Sunday, according to the newspaper. "He never wrote a bad column."
Bisher retired in 2009 after 59 years at the Georgia newspaper, writing his final column on the same typewriter he used in 1950.
At his retirement, Bisher said, "I just decided that's enough — I had been thinking about it a couple weeks...I just won't be writing a column."
The North Carolina native wrote hundreds of articles for national magazines including Sports Illustrated and the Saturday Evening Post. He also authored several books, including an autobiography of baseball great Hank Aaron.
Bisher began his career in 1938 at the Lumberton Voice in North Carolina, and he became an editor at the Charlotte News two years later. In 1949, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson gave Bisher and Sport Magazine his only interview since being ousted from baseball 30 years earlier in the "Black Sox" scandal.
After his official retirement, Bisher continued to write occasionally for the Journal-Constitution and to cover golf tournaments. He was hoping to cover this year's Masters tournament.
AJC sports editor Ray Cox said in a statement. "He was always a perfect Southern gentleman. He was first and foremost a journalist but one whose ability to write far surpassed the skills of most of us who came into the business hoping to emulate him."