Claude "Grits" Gresham, Jr.

Sport: Sports Writers

Induction Year: 1989

University: LSU

Induction Year: 1989

The first outdoorsman chosen for membership in the Hall of Fame, Gresham was the Winchester Outdoorsman of the Year and Louisiana Conservationist of the Year.  He spent 13 years as a field host, consultant and producer for ABC-TV’s “The American Sportsman.”  Well-known for television commercials and personal appearances as a Miller Lite All-Star, Gresham was shooting editor of Sports Afield Magazine, and published his sixth book, “Grits on Guns.”  He was a consultant for numerous outdoor industries.

He is the best-known outdoorsman in the world, a serious journalist who has gone to the White House for a personal interview with the President of the United States. But Claude Hamilton Gresham Jr. acknowledges that his chief claim to fame is the result of Miller Lite television commercials.

“You work all your life trying to get a few messages across, and in 30 seconds you’re famous,” says the man better known as “Grits” Gresham.

He got both his nickname (as a youngster, he was “Little Grits”) and his love for the outdoors from his father, a sports writer and minor league baseball player. He also inherited some of his dad’s athletic ability, hitting .590 on his high school baseball team and .440 as a freshman at the University of North Carolina. But his baseball career, like many others, was interrupted by World War II.

After serving four years in the Air Force, Gresham married Mary Ryan, daughter of a South Carolina doctor, and decided to pursue a career in wildlife management. That brought him to Louisiana, where he completed his college education at LSU.

He took a job with the United States Fish and Wildlife Services in Tennessee following his graduation from LSU, and then transferred to Arizona. In 1953 he returned to Louisiana as editor of the Louisiana Conservationist, and in 1955 the Gresham family (including three children) moved to Natchitoches—where they’ve lived ever since.

Gresham’s trademarks are muttonchop sideburns and a Stetson hat with a roll on either side.

His wife talked him into buying the hat, which is the color of bleached driftwood and has a deep crease in the top. “I hated it at first,” Gresham admits, “but after a week or so, I loved it.”

There was one minor problem: He couldn’t find another one like it. So he arranged to a Texas company to make one each time he wore out a hat.

Once he was getting out of a taxicab in Madrid, and a man 100 yards away yelled, “Grits!” It was actor Rip Torn, who Gresham hadn’t seen since he took Torn and Burt Reynolds duck hunting in Louisiana six years earlier. Rip’s wife, Geraldine Page, asked the actor how he was able to recognize Gresham. “Nobody else in the world has a hat like that,” he replied.

The duck hunting expedition with Torn and Reynolds in 1966 marked Gresham’s debut on “The American Sportsman,” a television show co-hosted by “Grits” and Curt Gowdy. For 13 years, Gresham hunted woodcock with Andy Devine, geese with Andy Griffin, Mexican doves with Bing Crosby and Phil Harris, Mearns quail with Mel Tillis and alligators with Bruce Jenner. “Grits also managed to get in plugs for conservation on the show.

He did the same thing in his weekly outdoors column, “Bayou Browsing,” in the Shreveport Times. Finally, the editor of the Times called him and said, “If you keep on writing editorials, we’re going to have to put you on the editorial page.”

“Go ahead,” Gresham replied—and they did, expanding his audience. He also had a nationally syndicated column.

The marriage of “Grits” and Mary in 1944 has evolved into a 48-year date—starting with a honeymoon on a troop train. Gresham talked the engineer into slowing down enough as the train entered a town that he and his buddies could toss Mary and her luggage off the train before the Military Police discovered her unauthorized presence.

When “Grits” goes big game hunting in Africa, Mary goes along to do her things—which include bird watching, outdoor painting and wildlife photography. She has turned the latter two hobbies into profitable ventures that complement her husband’s writing career.

It all started when “Little Grits” got his first air rifle as a Christmas gift at the age of five. “I slept with my gun,” Gresham said. “There was a big window next to my bed, and we lived right on the edge of the woods. Most mornings I’d wake up and there’d be a fat ole rabbit sitting right outside that window. I’d roll over and pop him before I even got out of bed.”

All of his hunting hasn’t been that simple. On one African safari, he tracked a lion for hours. “Suddenly he came out of the bush at us about 15 paces away,” Gresham later recalled. “I had time for one shot.”

The fact that he lived to tell the story is proof that, as usual, “Grits” Gresham’s shot found its mark.