27 Facts About Mitch Albom

Mitchell David Albom was born on May 23,1958 and is an American author, journalist, and musician.

Mitch Albom earned a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1979 from Brandeis University.

Mitch Albom paid his tuition in part through employment playing piano.

In 1985, having won that year's Associated Press Sports Editors award for best Sports News Story, Mitch Albom was hired as lead sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press to replace Mike Downey, a popular columnist who had taken a job with the Los Angeles Times.

In 1989, when the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News merged weekend publications, Mitch Albom was asked to add a weekly non-sports column to his duties.

The players had told Mitch Albom they planned to attend, so Mitch Albom, filing on his normal Friday deadline but knowing the column could not come out until Sunday wrote that the players were there.

Mitch Albom was in attendance at the game, but the columnist failed to check on the two players' presence.

Mitch Albom, who was close to Schwartz during his college years at Brandeis University, felt guilty about not keeping in touch so he reconnected with his former professor, visiting him in suburban Boston and eventually coming every Tuesday for discussions about life and death.

Mitch Albom, seeking a way to pay for Schwartz's medical bills, sought out a publisher for a book about their visits.

Tuesdays with Morrie, which chronicled Mitch Albom's time spent with his professor, was published in 1997.

On November 22,2005, Mitch Albom was the sole and final guest on Ted Koppel's farewell appearance on ABC's Nightline.

Mitch Albom has said his relationship with his own mother was largely behind the story of that book, and that several incidents in For One More Day are actual events from his childhood.

The book is written in the same vein as Tuesdays With Morrie, in which the main character, Mitch Albom, goes through several heartfelt conversations with the Rabbi in order to better know and understand the man that he would one day eulogize.

From his relationships with these two very different men of faith, Mitch Albom writes about the difference faith can make in the world.

In 2013, Mitch Albom moved to a new publisher, HarperCollins, for the publication of his seventh book and fourth novel.

The town is fictional and not the real Coldwater, Michigan, but Mitch Albom pays tribute to the real small town in the book's acknowledgements.

Mitch Albom has been featured on the cover of Making Music Magazine.

Mitch Albom performed with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a band of writers that featured Dave Barry, Stephen King, Ridley Pearson, Amy Tan, Kathi Kamen Goldmark, Sam Barry, and Scott Turow from 1995 until the band dissolved in 2012 with the death of founder Kathi Goldmark.

In July 2013, Mitch Albom co-authored Hard Listening with the rest of the Rock Bottom Remainders.

In 1999, Mitch Albom was named National Hospice Organization's Man of the Year.

Mitch Albom directs the Have Faith Haiti Mission, a project whose stated objective is "dedicated to the safety, education, health and spiritual development of Haiti's impoverished children and orphans", incorporating language lessons and Christian prayer.

In February 2003, Mitch Albom was called to testify at the perjury trial of Chris Webber, member of the "Fab Five" of the University of Michigan's basketball teams in the early 1990s, and subject of a book by Mitch Albom.

On October 22,2007, Mitch Albom appeared with former New York Governor Mario Cuomo and Tony Bennett in An Evening with Tony Bennett, to honor the release of Bennett's Tony Bennett In The Studio: A Life of Art and Music, for which Mitch Albom wrote the foreword.

Mitch Albom has won more than 200 other writing honors, from organizations including the National Headliner Awards, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, and National Association of Black Journalists.

On June 25,2010, Mitch Albom was awarded the APSE's Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement, presented at the annual APSE convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, although his selection was heavily criticized by a number of Mitch Albom's peers, including fellow Red Smith Award winner Dave Kindred.

In 2013, Mitch Albom was inducted into the National Sports Media Association "Hall of Fame",.

Mitch Albom has been married to his wife, Janine, since 1995, and they reside in Detroit, Michigan.