Forest Gump Writer, Winston Groom, Passes Away

Winston Groom was an American writer, best known for his novel about a simple-minded Southern boy, who always found himself in the right place at the right time. Forest Gump, like his successful and now true to life, fishing enterprise Bubba Gump Shrimp, quickly became a household name after release of the movie in 1994, and starred Tom Hanks in the title role.

Mr. Groom was born in 1943 in Washington, DC, but moved with his family to Mobile, Alabama where he attended school at UMS Wright Preparatory, then the University of Alabama. After completing his tour of duty in Vietnam after graduation, Groom got a job at The Washington Star, a unique afternoon newspaper, that competed in the nation’s capital with the Washington Post.

Groom left the Star and journalism and moved back to Alabama, where he wrote Forest Gump in 1986.

When I published The Boys From Hicks Drive, I wrote to 17 authors who’d successfully published some of their work, inquiring how I might go about it. Winston Groom was the only one that wrote me back. Below is our exchange.

Message Details: July 19, 2019

Your Name: Richard Bruce Speight

Your Email: rspeight@game7publishing.com

Subject: What Now?

Message: Please tell me how you got noticed as an author. I self published in Dec, but want to get The Boys From Hicks Drive Vienna VA to the next level. I did the Page and Palette and another book store in Vienna, write-ups in alumni mags, Twitter and Facebook. Not ready to give up...Thanks.

Winston Groom:, 7/31/2019 “Well, I had a large publisher, Simon & Schuster, with a publicity depart that got me on TV shows such as Today, etc and I got a lot of positive reviews in newspapers, and things sort of took off from there.”

Yeah, they sure did. Winston Groom died in Fairhope, Alabama on September 16, 2020.