Grits Gresham

Claude Hamilton Gresham Jr. (June 21, 1922 – February 18, 2008), better known as Grits Gresham, was an American sportsman, author, photographer and television personality who hosted ABC's The American Sportsman television series from 1966 to 1979. Gresham, who resided on the historic Cane River Lake in Natchitoches, the oldest city in Louisiana, traveled throughout the globe, particularly South America and Africa, to engage in hunting, fishing, and shooting with various American celebrities. He was a champion of the environment and conservation, the subject of his graduate school thesis.

Early years, education, military Gresham was born in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, to Claude Gresham Sr. and the former Belle Hill.

He 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. This school closed its doors in 1968. He also 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.

Before Gresham began his career in outdoor journalism, he was on the roster of the Cubs' Shelby, North Carolina farm team but never played. His son, Tom Gresham, learned of the baseball offer from the Cubs several years after his father's death while looking through old family records. "He went to work to take care of his young family ... I wonder how much it hurt him to make that decision. So much that he never, ever told us he was signed by the Cubs."

During World War II, Gresham served in the United States Army Air Corps, the precursor to the United States Air Force. He considered his military service as important as his success in journalism.

In 1944, Gresham married the former Mary Eleanor Ryan (July 4, 1925 – March 5, 2001). She 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. In their first thirteen years of marriage, they had a different address each Christmas. Mary became an excellent cook by necessity and assisted her husband on his assignments with the use of her memory, note-taking, and photographic skills.

Gresham succeeded former Governor of South Dakota Joe Foss as the host of The American Sportsman. He was thereafter joined by Curt Gowdy as co-host. Gresham further hosted Shooting Sports America, sponsored by Chevy Trucks on the ESPN network. For twenty-six years, he was the shooting editor of Sports Afield magazine. He was also published in Sports Illustrated and Gentleman's Quarterly. He appeared in television commercials for Miller Lite Beer.

Joe Macaluso, outdoor editor of the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate recalled a fishing trip with Gresham on Toledo Bend Reservoir at the Texas-Louisiana boundary. Macaluso described Gresham as "the most famous of all Louisiana outdoors writers and media members... He was like a loaf of good French bread, crusty-hard on the outside and tender on the inside. When I told him that, he laughed [and said] 'Don’t tell anyone else'..."

The Gresham Collection is located at the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Foundation in Natchitoches.

Books The Complete Book of Bass Fishing Fishes and Fishing In Louisiana Fishing and Boating in Louisiana The Sportsman and his Family Outdoors The Complete Wildfowler Grits on Guns Grits Gresham on Duck Hunting (video) Grits Gresham on Goose Hunting (video) Weatherby: The Man. the Gun. the Legend