Andy Brack wanted to visit states in the continental U.S. he hadn’t seen, so he planned a three-week driving tour for this summer that would take him from Charleston, South Carolina, to the Southwest, West Coast, Northwest and then back home.
He told his 90-year-old father about the trip.
“And he said, ‘I want to go,’” Brack said. “He just had this insatiable curiosity, to go everywhere and see everything and everyone.”
Elliott Brack didn’t get to accompany his son on the cross-country trip. The veteran Georgia newspaperman died May 15, lucid to the end, having spoken with a granddaughter less than two hours before his heart stopped. His passing has generated an outpouring of grief and stories from across Georgia, his son said.
Brack mentored publishers and editors, raised millions for charities, such as the Salvation Army and the YMCA, and always tried to improve the place he lived.
He believed that a robust local news source was essential for improving its community, his friends said. As president of the Georgia Press Association in 1987-88, he knew most every newspaper editor in the state.
Charlotte Norsworthy, executive director of the Red & Black Publishing Co., which publishes the student newspaper at the University of Georgia, said she had many conversations with Brack. From 1979 until 2012, he served as chairman and president of the Red and Black Publishing Co. when it became independent of the university.
“He was a steadfast, newspaper-ink-stained legacy journalist who knew everyone in Georgia journalism,” she said. “He was a committed champion for local news, and he believed in the power of community and in the future and future generations of journalists. ”
The only child of Willie T. and Effie Brack who lived to adulthood, Elliott Earl Brack was born on Halloween 1935 in rural Wilkinson County in Middle Georgia. At 4, he moved with his parents to Macon, where his father drove a bus for Trailways for more than 30 years and his mother worked part time in a department store.
As a student at Lanier Boys High School, Brack started covering high school sports and continued to do so while he attended Mercer University, graduating with a bachelor’s in economics. He married his high school sweetheart and worked for a while as a reporter before serving three years with the U.S. Army in Germany. When they returned, he earned a master’s in journalism from the University of Iowa.
With financial help from his mother-in-law, Brack bought into the Wayne County Press in Jesup. Tall and friendly, he was a familiar figure around town, attending Rotary meetings and joining the local Episcopal church.
His weekly newspaper won state and national awards. Brack was so generous that he printed the Darien Press after McIntosh County criminals — whom the Darien paper was investigating — burned its offices to the ground.
After a dozen years in Wayne County, Brack moved to Athens and taught newspaper management at the University of Georgia before relocating his family to suburban Atlanta and running the Gwinnett Daily News for almost 12 years. He settled first in Lawrenceville and later moved to Norcross.
Once more he got involved with Rotary, the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce and other nonprofits. He used to order as many as 6,000 pounds of Vidalia onions that he would package in 10- and 20-pound bags to give away. It was a marketing device, he told his son — recipients likely wouldn’t remember a Christmas card, but they would remember getting sweet onions in the middle of summer.
“Elliott knew practically everybody in Gwinnett,” said Connie Wiggins, who directed the Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful nonprofit for 30 years. “He was the kind of person who reached out to everyone.”
In 1988, Brack joined what would become The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as publisher of the Gwinnett Extra. His many contacts throughout the county — in local government, business and civic groups — helped the Atlanta operation succeed as its reporters squared off against the staff at the Gwinnett Daily News, which had been purchased by The New York Times.
Andy Brack said his father was “so hardcore, I am pretty sure he bought a billboard near the Gwinnett Daily’s offices that said the real news in the county was found in the Gwinnett Extra.”
Ellen East, an editor who worked with Brack at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said he showed her it was possible to be part of a community even while reporting on it. “I learned a lot from Elliott,” she said, “but that was the most important thing.”
In 2001, after retiring from the AJC, Brack began publishing the online Gwinnett Forum. Having founded and chaired Leadership Gwinnett, he later founded Senior Leadership Gwinnett. Always interested in the Red & Black, he worked to raise money for a new $2 million building for the publication.
He was an involved member of Christ Church Episcopal in Norcross, serving as a greeter at the 8 a.m. service as well as a a member of the finance committee. His fellow parishioners said if they had had a lively discussion with Brack at church, he would sometimes send them an email suggesting they write on the topic for the Forum.
Brack himself wrote about everything, from recent trips abroad to politics, from mules to mail service, dirt roads to dugouts. His son estimates that over his lifetime, Elliott Brack wrote more than 10,000 columns. He also wrote a 2008 history of Gwinnett County titled “Gwinnett: A Little Above Atlanta.”
In addition to his son, Brack is survived by his wife, Barbara London Brack; his daughter, Elizabeth C. Brack Fehrs; and two granddaughters. He was predeceased by a daughter, Catherine C. Brack.
A funeral will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Christ Church Episcopal, 400 Holcomb Bridge Road in Norcross. Burial will be Sunday at Walnut Creek Baptist Church near Allentown, about a mile from Brack’s birthplace.
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