"Groom was in his early 30s and a newspaper reporter at the Washington Star in Washington, D.C. when he made a bold, life changing decision. "(I asked myself) ‘Am I going to want to do this the rest of my life?’ And the answer that came to me was no. I wanted to write a novel and, I had for a long time.” Groom said. After deciding writing a novel was his chosen path, Groom resigned from the Washington Star. “What I considered bold about it was that I told everybody I was going to do it because I was going to write a novel," Groom remembers. Groom said he knew that if he failed, going back would be embarrassing, and perhaps not even possible. But, he said he didn't want to be a good "old" reporter. "There were always old guys, very good old reporters. And if you would look in their desk, you would probably find an unfinished novel, manuscript. He said he didn’t want to be that guy, so he saved some money and made a clean break from the reporting business."
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Born in 1943, Groom grew up in Mobile, Alabama. In 1965 he graduated from the University of Alabama and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. He served in Vietnam with the Fourth Infantry Division from July 1966 to September 1967 when he was honorably discharged with the rank of Captain. He then spent the next eight years working as a reporter and columnist for the Washington Star before becoming a full-time author. He holds several honorary Ph.D. degrees as a “Doctor of Humane Letters.”
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Photo: The EVFF Planning Committee Will Rogers Theatre
Attribution: Embarras Valley Film Festival, Wikipedia
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