KSU Tuscarawas packed with Friday Night Lights fans
More than 300 people filled the Kent State University Tuscarawas Founder’s Hall auditorium Tuesday, Oct. 20, to hear Pulitzer Prize winner H.G. Bissinger expound on Friday Night Lights-20 Years Later, bringing this year’s One Book, One Community event to a climactic close.Several people also attended a meeting earlier in the day at the Daily Grind Café in New Philadelphia, where area writers were given the opportunity to participate in an informal chat with Bissinger and talk about his journey as a writer.
In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize winner, Harry Gerard Bissinger III is also a Livingston Award winner, an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award winner, National Headliners Award winner, and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
His journalism career began at the Ledger-Star in Norfolk, Virginia. He went on to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Chicago Tribune and, later, the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“I knew from the age of seven,” said Bissinger, “that I wanted to write. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. I grew up in New York City, and I was always surrounded by newspapers. Each member of my family had their favorites. Reading the paper was routine. I loved the idea that every 24 hours there was new information available to me.”
In 1988, “Buzz” Bissinger moved to Odessa, Texas, to write about the Permian High School Panther team, their families, and the spirit of the town. Friday Night Lights, an American classic, has sold nearly two million copies, and became a motion picture and television series. More than a book about sports, this moving story is about race, politics, economics, education, and the young lives whose course may have been determined before they really began.
“There is really nothing I have forgotten,” said Bissinger, “after 21 years. I have vivid flashbacks of the silent locker room before the game, the loyalty and excitement of the 20,000 fans, and the hands of the team reaching for the playoff trophy. These are timeless scenes. Friday Night Lights is a book millions have related to. Pride, innocence, and boys playing for nothing else but the honor of their town that will always define them.”
Bissinger’s speech at Kent State also reminded the crowd that there is another side to the experience in Odessa as well, as he highlighted members of the team and what they are doing now.
“As an observer and someone who could detach himself,” said Bissinger, “I did see the other side-a shocking side in which high school kids were forgotten once their athletic powers dried up. It is the nature of sports and our society.”
Bissinger went to the 20-year reunion of the boys he wrote about in Friday Night Lights.
He keeps in touch with several players, and although Odessa, at the time the book came out, disliked the way their town was portrayed, Bissinger was later told that it made them look in the mirror and want to change some things.
In addition to Friday Night Lights, Bissinger has also written The Prayer for the City, Three Nights in August, and his most recent book, Shooting Stars, which is co-authored by Cleveland Cavaliers basketball great Lebron James. He is currently working on a book about his twin sons, Gerry and Zachary, born 13 weeks premature and weighing less than two pounds, with two distinct differences - Gerry going on to be a public school teacher and Zachary, because of oxygen deprivation at birth, suffering from brain damage and struggling with learning disabilities.
Bissinger now resides in Philadelphia with his wife and three children.
Following the Friday Night Lights-20 Years Later discussion, the winning entry for the authentic Schutt Dillon Panthers football helmet signed by Kyle Chandler, Taylor Kitsch and other members of the NBC television show, Friday Night Lights, was picked by Bissinger.
Claymont area resident Shelly Beem took home the $300 helmet, also signed by Bissinger.
Refreshments were served as the award-winning author signed copies of Friday Night Lights and Shooting Stars for a line of people that filled the entire lobby of Founder’s Hall.
This year’s One Book One Community project brought the communities throughout Tuscarawas County together for a shared experience that proved to cultivate a culture of reading and conversation.