Groom flips through photographs of her late husband: Winston as a strapping, short-haired soldier in Vietnam as a rugby player soaring skyward (“He loved playing rugby the years he lived in Washington, D.C.”) as a young novelist, sitting with his feet propped on his desk in the Hamptons, his English Sheepdog, Fenwick, posted at the door. Groom says.Īt her home in Point Clear, Mrs. “He made so many great friends that way and stayed in touch with them through the years,” Mrs. After returning from Vietnam and finding work as a reporter for the now-defunct Washington Star, Groom later revealed that he felt inspired to pursue his novelist aspirations in the wake of his mother’s death.Īs a reporter in D.C., Winston Groom (jumping) discovered rugby and threw himself into the sport. “So I had a dose of literature that way,” he noted.

His mother, Ruth, was a high school teacher with a master’s thesis on Shakespeare. For a time, he considered becoming an attorney like his father, Winston, but he would come to find the law too dry. Groom was raised and educated on Old Shell Road as a cadet at University Military School (UMS), he found his niche as the editor of the school newspaper and yearbook. “He didn’t care about being in the spotlight much,” says wife Susan Groom. “If he was to receive an award, he’d be a little shy about it.”ĭespite his eye-grabbing height and “Gump” (as he was known to refer to his 1986 novel), Groom often found solace in intimate conversations at the fringe of a party or at his summer retreat in North Carolina after the release of the film version of “Forrest Gump,” he confessed that he “headed for the mountains to escape it all and didn’t answer the phone for a couple of months.” In remembrance of Groom, the New York Times posited, “Forrest Gump became, like Huck Finn and Atticus Finch, to name two other fictional Southerners, a beloved American character.” If blending in was the goal, he certainly didn’t do himself any favors in later years - upon his passing in September, at the age of 77, Groom had more than 20 books to his name, a Pulitzer Prize nomination and the elusive honor of having created a character that is firmly embedded in the national consciousness. At 6 feet 5 inches, the author towered in every room he occupied, even as a young man. It was never easy for Winston Groom to blend in. Winston Groom at his residence in the Hamptons, 1978

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