From Humble Beginnings to National Renown

They came from humble beginnings, buoyed by strong family dynamics and a willingness to break the mold. But the ties that bind Rick Bragg and Roy Wood Jr. are still evident after all these years.

With humor and self-deprecation, they reminded everyone how much we have in common.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin welcomed the two, noting how deserving the recognition is for the two storytellers. Bragg, he said, “opened hearts and minds” while Wood “uses humor not only to entertain but to enlighten the world. Rick and Roy are titans.”

They grew up an hour and a generation apart.

Bragg was reared near Jacksonville, Alabama, where the Appalachian Mountains begin their ascent, “in a (prefab) house, really a two-room shed.” There weren’t enough beds for everyone, so as a child he slept at the foot of his grandmother’s bed. But the arrangements had benefits. At night, she would leave the radio on, where he would listen to Hank Williams and Sam Cooke on far-away AM stations.

Bragg headed off to Jacksonville State University and took on work to pay the bills.

“I was making $150 a week running a truck and a chainsaw, and no one could understand why I quit to make $50 at the Jacksonville News (a small local newspaper),” Bragg said.

The answer was simple. Reporters didn’t get whacked across the face by whiplashing pine-tree limbs, which was a regular hazard of his previous work. But the gamble on vocation led him on a meteoric rise, from the Anniston Star to the Birmingham News and to the New York Times, where he won journalism’s most coveted award while taking on assignments from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City to Miami. He also earned a prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard.

I was making $150 a week running a truck and a chainsaw, and no one could understand why I quit to make $50 at the Jacksonville News.
Rick Bragg

Wood shuttled between Memphis, Tennessee, and Alabama before moving to the West End neighborhood of Birmingham. His mother, a teacher, got him into a private school, forcing him to walk a long distance each day. The walk after school could be dicey, through rough neighborhoods and gang territories. But home was always a refuge.

“My Pops made sure there were encyclopedias and books,” Wood said. “Once I got home, we couldn’t go anywhere else. The degradation of the neighborhood had started.”

But a two-car garage, a flat driveway and a pair of towering acorn trees providing shade from the heat inspired his parents to put up a basketball hoop that soon became the envy of everyone.

“Every terrible person on the west side came to our house to shoot hoops,” Wood remembered. But they arrived with a respect for Wood’s parents. “If you bothered me, you couldn’t come over to shoot hoops. So, I was able to move through that neighborhood (without fear) because of hoops.”

He was a student at Florida A&M when he talked his way into an internship after being prodded by his professor mentor. He targeted a local hip-hop station, riding his bike in at 5:30 a.m. to meet with the manager. Wood’s point was succinct: You don’t have anyone doing the news in the morning.

He was hired on the spot, and the tapes got him a job at Jamz 95.7 in his hometown as a writer-producer for the “Buckwilde Morning Show.” By this time, he already had a fledgling career as a stand-up comedian, and he carried the momentum to sitcom work, the Comedy Network’s “The Daily Show” and movie appearances, including the recent reboot of “Confess, Fletch” with Jon Hamm.

Most recently he hosted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Like Wood, Bragg made a name for himself in a big way. His first book, “All Over but the Shoutin’” came serendipitously. He was working at the Times when he was approached by a literary agent and publisher who wanted his evocative prose in book form.

That was nearly 30 years ago. Since then, he has become a favorite of writer’s writers – including the late Willie Morris and Pat Conroy. He now works on helping the next generation of writers as a professor at the University of Alabama.

I go back and listen to my Pop’s old recordings, and I hear him say the same things I’m saying – only with a couple of punchlines added.
Roy Wood Jr.

Wood lost his father while he was still young. He said he rarely saw his father laugh. But as the years passed, he sees the similarity in his comedy and his dad’s journalism, which took Wood Sr. to South Africa and Vietnam.

“I go back and listen to my Pop’s old recordings, and I hear him say the same things I’m saying – only with a couple of punchlines added,” Wood said.