“I’m a good listener, always have been. I grew up sitting at the knees of some of the finest storytellers the South has ever known, and I listened – close,” Jimmy says. “Those old men would tell about bear hunting, fishing, running from the law, and fighting, among other things. How animated they were depended on how much whiskey they’d drunk that night. Sometimes they’d buck-dance and sing. Other times they sit somber, staring at a fire, and discuss religion or politics. I sat there and recorded it all in my mind. Heck, I could tell those stories as well as or better than they could by the time I was a teenager. It took a long time before I decided to write it all down.”    

Jimmy Blackmon was born November 4, 1968 in Calhoun, Georgia. The son of mill workers and outdoor enthusiasts, he grew up with a love of horseback riding, fishing, hunting, and trapping. He dreamed of moving west and being a cowboy until an Army recruiter entered his life in 1986.

Jimmy decided on an Army career while still in high school. In the summer of 1986, he shipped off to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for basic training. He spent five years in the U.S. Army Reserves while attending North Georgia College, a military school in Dahlonega, Georgia. He would go on to be the Commander of the North Georgia Corps of Cadets from 1990 – 1991, earn a degree in history and win the Douglas MacArthur award for leadership his senior year at North Georgia.

In 1991, he was commissioned a second lieutenant of aviation and reported to Fort Rucker, Alabama for flight school, where he would become a helicopter pilot.  After completing flight school, Ranger school and the Officer Basic Course, Jimmy and his wife Lisa began a life in the military, which would take them all over the U.S. and Europe.

Jimmy has served operational deployments in Bosnia, two tours in Iraq and a tour in Afghanistan. He and Lisa, and their four children, currently live in Clarksville, Tennessee, where Jimmy serves in the 101^st Airborne Division (Air Assault).

Throughout 24 years of military service, Jimmy fondly reflected on his childhood experiences in rural Georgia. In the mid-90s he began writing about his experiences growing up in Gordon County and sharing them with family members who urged him to publish them. The result is Southern Roots.