Grover Lewis: The Uncommon Insight and Grace of an Ordinary Man

Grover Lewis was eight years old when his father shot his mother eight times and Big Grover also died after being shot in the struggle. Grover went to live with redneck relatives who showed little love or understanding toward a half-blind, strong-willed boy grieving the loss of the only person in his life who loved, encouraged and protected him. At the age of 12, Grover found sanctuary in a public library and began reading some of the great books of the world. I sometimes skipped school to read, he said, because reading was as essential as breathing to me. In the corps of writers and thinkers, Grover became a general but he always marched--and drank--with the troops. He had an anthropologist's take on the faces and focus of humanity and his rhythm of language was as distinct as his fingerprint and as generic as the people of the earth. Grover worked at newspapers in Texas then the Village Voice, and freelanced for the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and L.A. Weekly; he also wrote for Playboy, New West, Texas Monthly, and Rolling Stone magazines. In March 1978 Grover was writing an article on Larry Flynt and was walking a few steps behind Flynt when racist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin shot Flynt and his lawyer in Lawrenceville, Georgia, where Flynt was on trial for obscenity. Grover's creative journalism brought us the morning light of understanding and the symphonic flight of language. Always standing with the little man that Harry Truman lobbied for, that Woody Guthrie and Lightnin' Hopkins sang about, Grover saw the human side of an issue--no matter how obscured by fashionable nonsense or ethical ambiguities--also the starkness and beauty that define the world. His uncommon insight, curiosity--and the courage that remains after confronting death then walking away--taught him to outwit the wardens of the world and the jailers of souls. On Easter Sunday in 1995, Grover died of lung cancer, without fear or self-pity, at home with a woman who loved and respected him. He understood that truth makes us free because it liberates reason from fear and helps us accept the inevitable with grace. In a world of pain, injustice, misery and absurdity, there always have been and probably always will be people like Grover Lewis, who was as ordinary as he was heroic.