Atlanta lost a local legend this week. North Carolina native Furman Bisher, a longtime columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and most recently for SCNI, passed away at the age of 93 from a heart attack.
Bisher’s writing certainly provided a massive influence within the Atlanta sports community, but his impact went way beyond his penmanship. As someone whose career began when this city was still a small town of sorts, Bisher was one of the instrumental forces in altering the sporting landscape in Atlanta, changing it from that of a small and largely ignored market to the booming professional sports city it is today.
IMMEDIATE SUCCESS …
Born in Denton, N.C., Bisher’s parents named him after a well known Baptist minister, James Furman.
Bisher’s success as a journalist was almost instant after graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1938. At just 20 years of age, he became the editor of the Lumberton Voice in Lumberton, N.C.
Several years later, Bisher found himself serving his country as a junior grade lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, where he edited a military newspaper and managed the Armed Services Radio Network in the South Pacific.
After returning home, Bisher would accomplish one of his most impressive feats as a journalist. In 1949, Bisher scored the only published interview with the infamous “Shoeless” Joe Jackson since his supposed involvement in the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. The former third baseman insisted upon his innocence in the interview and trusted only Bisher to tell his story.
“I had never seen Shoeless Joe before,” Bisher once told longtime co-worker Jeff Schultz. “When we spoke he said ‘this will be the first time I tell this story and the last.’”
Bisher would go on to call the interview one of his “biggest scoops” in Jackson’s obituary after the old ball player passed away two years later.
ON TO ATLANTA …
Bisher’s fine career earned him a job at the Atlanta Constitution in 1950. It was there that he would really make a name for himself, becoming a household name in the Atlanta sports community thanks to his writing, opinions and overall influence on sports in a city that blossomed into an urban center during his tenure.
Bisher’s accolades are too many to list in full. Some of the highest accolades included being named one of the nation’s five best columnists by esteemed Time Magazine in 1961, serving as president of the Football Writers Association of America in 1959 and 1960, and presiding over the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association from 1964 to 1976.
In 1968, he scored a piece with another baseball legend, working in conjunction with Hank Aaron to write the legendary Braves superstar’s first autobiography, Aaron, RF. Years later, Aaron was all set to break Babe Ruth’s record for all-time home runs, and Bisher wrote an afterword to include Aaron’s seasons from 1968 to 1973.
But his reach extended far beyond his writing. He was an active advocate for bringing professional sports to Atlanta. Bisher served as a charter member of the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium Authority, an essential group in bringing the Braves to Atlanta.
By career’s end, Bisher was inducted in the Georgia and Atlanta Sports Halls of Fame, and he was inducted into the Atlanta Press Club Hall of Fame in 2011.
FONDLY REMEBERED …
Rob Green Sr., a former columnist at the Charlotte Observer, worked for Bisher in his early days as an editor, where Bisher pushed the young writer to do more. For a hardworker like Bisher, striving for perfection was the only way to work. Green remembered his old colleague and friend’s work ethic fondly after writing a tribute to him in the Observer.
“His travels [from Atlanta] often brought him to his native North Carolina to write about a football game between a Georgia team and one of our Big Four,” Green wrote. “Never mind that he was one of the biggest names in sportswriting, he worked harder than anybody else in the press box. He would write a column for the early editions, maybe describing the campus, the weather, the crowd making its way into the stadium, relatively meaningless tidbits, but from his keyboard, they read beautifully. Then when the game was over he would write a lengthy account of the game and then another column, twiddling with a curl that hung down on his forehead as he chose his words. It was not unusual for him to be the last writer out of the press box.”
Bisher was more than a writer, as Jeff Shultz wrote; he was a “legend.” In his column about Bisher, the longtime AJC writer remembered Bisher as not just an esteemed colleague, but also a true pal.
“The man who watched Cy Young pitch, the man who saw Joe Louis box, the man who covered the very first post-bootlegging NASCAR race,” Shultz wrote. “One of the few people who legitimately deserved to have the word ‘legend’ attached to his name — just dialed my cell phone to say, ‘Hello, young man. I like what you wrote.’”
“I’m sad today, not just because I lost a friend and former colleague in Furman Bisher but because this is like a door to history slamming shut for all of us.”
Having lived and written through so many eras, Bisher saw more over his illustrious career than one could imagine.
“People look at me like I’m in a museum or something,” Bisher told Schultz. “It’s like I’m one of those stone things, talking to you. A talking statue. They can’t quite understand it. They look at me and say, ‘You really knew him?’ It really didn’t strike me as that unusual at the time.”
Schultz wasn’t the only person in awe of Bisher’s gift. Whether it was his writing, editing, friendships or opinions, Furman Bisher was a true legend, and is one of the principle figures in making Atlanta the sports town it is today.
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