Grits Gresham was a champion of the environment and conservation, the subject of his graduate school thesis.
20 Facts About Grits Gresham
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Grits Gresham was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, to Claude Grits Gresham Sr.
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Grits Gresham attended on a baseball scholarship the Blue Ridge School for Boys, a private male boarding school named for the Blue Ridge Mountains and located in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
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Grits Gresham studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, but he procured his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees, with specialty in forestry and wildlife management, from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where he was thereafter an inductee into the LSU Hall of Distinction.
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Grits Gresham considered his military service as important as his success in journalism.
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In 1944, Grits Gresham married the former Mary Eleanor Ryan.
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Grits Gresham was a Roman Catholic, and he was a Baptist; they wed in a Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee while he was in between military assignments.
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Grits Gresham worked for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and thereafter edited the Louisiana Conservationist magazine.
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Grits Gresham was the former outdoors editor of The Shreveport Times too.
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Grits Gresham succeeded former Governor Joe Foss of South Dakota as the host of The American Sportsman.
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Grits Gresham was thereafter joined by Curt Gowdy as co-host.
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Grits Gresham further hosted Shooting Sports America, sponsored by Chevy Trucks on the ESPN network.
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Grits Gresham was published in Sports Illustrated and Gentleman's Quarterly.
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Grits Gresham appeared in television commercials for Miller Lite Beer.
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Grits Gresham was among the first to sound the alarm about the loss of wetlands in Louisiana.
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Grits Gresham worked with Ray Scott, the founder of the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, to halt the cheating that had previously haunted tournament bass fishing.
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Grits Gresham had spent most of his last year in a nursing home in Natchitoches.
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Joe Macaluso, outdoor editor of the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate recalled a fishing trip with Grits Gresham on Toledo Bend Reservoir at the Texas-Louisiana boundary.
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Grits Gresham was like a loaf of good French bread, crusty-hard on the outside and tender on the inside.
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The Grits Gresham Collection is located at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Foundation in Natchitoches.