Media Hall of Fame - Andrew Heller

Andrew Heller, 1980, Journalism: Andrew Heller grew up reading Mike Royko, Lewis Grizzard and many other wonderful columnists, both humor and political, and he decided early on that’s what he wanted to do for a living. Because how hard could it be? Sure enough, his dream came true. He became an enduringly popular columnist in Michigan for a very long time, and along the way he published three collections of his work in book form: Come Heller High Water, Come Heller High Water II, and Saving the World One Column at a Time.

In 1979, while in high school, he wrote his first column for The Escanaba Daily Press, his hometown paper in the Upper Peninsula. The column was about his grandma being mugged in a nearby village where such things don’t happen. It wasn’t very well done but the paper still ran his column for decades thereafter.

In the early ‘80s, he wrote columns and drew really bad editorial cartoons for CM Life at Central Michigan University because he enjoyed it when co-eds said he was funny, which didn’t happen very often and still doesn’t. In 1987, he began writing an occasional column for The Saginaw News, which soon became regular. He wrote political and humor columns full-time for The Flint Journal from 1989 to 2009 and as a freelancer for MLive and The Flint Journal from 2009-2016.

Over the years, he won 20 awards for excellence from the Michigan Associated Press, the Michigan Press Association, the Detroit Press Club and the National Society of Newspaper columnists. He currently lives near Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is married to his lifelong love, the lovely yet formidable Marcia, who became a frequent character in his columns, which still annoys her to no end.