Former News and Record Sports Editor Wilt Browning has passed away:Former Greensboro Grasshoppers’ and Atlanta Braves’ official scorer is gone

He was the official scorer for the Greensboro Grasshoppers and the Atlanta Braves and he was much more than that….

Wilt Browning, who touched many of us with his work/the written word, Wilt Browning is gone…I was just asking Bill Hass(another outstanding N&R writer) about Wilt Browning a few weeks ago…It seems like only yesterday…..

from Eddie Wooten and John Dell, both currently with the News and Record…..
Wilt Browning, a writer, columnist and sports editor for the News & Record from 1977 to 1996 as part of a 41-year career, has died in San Clemente, Calif. Browning, who was 83, had lived in Kernersville until a couple of years ago before moving to San Clemente, Calif.

Browning was inducted into the state sports Hall of Fame in 2012, and he also was enshrined in the Guilford County Sports Hall of Fame. He received the state’s sportswriter of the year award from the National Sports Media Association, based in Winston-Salem, five times, and the South Atlantic League also inducted him into its Hall of Fame.

Browning, who was in his early 80s, grew up in Easley, S.C., the son of textile mill workers. He married Joyce Cantrell, on Leap Day in 1956, and they were together for 62 years until her death in 2018.

Browning served in the U.S. Air Force then began his sportswriting career in Topeka, Kan., in 1957. He retired as sports editor and columnist for the Asheville Citizen-Times in 1998. In between he worked for papers in Greenville, S.C., Atlanta and Greensboro, as well as public relations jobs for the Atlanta Falcons and Baltimore Colts.

Read more about Wilt Browning, from Eddie Wooten and John Dell, when you CLICK HERE…..

Bill Hass
“I was able to experience him in two different ways. One as a colleague. And then as somebody who worked for him when he was sports editor and I was an assistant sports editor. He had a way of seeing people in a way that was just a little bit different. As a writer, he was always interested in a good story, telling a good story. He didn’t write about himself, he didn’t use the capital ‘I’ all that often. He would rather talk with somebody and get to the essence of that person to convey it to the readers. It’s just because he was interested. He wanted to know what people thought, what made them tick, how they got to be like they are. But he always showed an interest in the person. He was the same was as a manager. He showed in interest in people, an interest in his staff.”

Hass is a retired former News and Record journalist