“Movie making is the slowest business on earth next to fossil manufacture...” Aaron Latham


   Few people in De Leon remember Aaron Latham as his family left De Leon after his fourth grade year but nearly everyone has seen his wife on television.

     Aaron was born in Spur to Clyde and Launa “Gussie” Latham.  As a very young child, the family moved to Munday and then to De Leon when his dad became the coach of the Bearcats  in 1947.  By that time, Aaron had a sister named Von Sharon.    Mrs. Latham taught in the elementary grades.

     About 1954 the family moved to Abilene.

Aaron eventually studied at Columbia and followed that with a long writing career.

     Perhaps his best know work was an article  that was turned into the movie Urban Cowboy in the 70s, and then into a musical in early 2003.

      He also wrote scripts for the movies Perfect and The Program.

      Among his books are Crazy Sunday: F Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood, Riding With John Wayne: Code of the West, The Frozen Leopard: Hunting My Dark Heart in Africa; The Cowboy With the Tiffany Gun, and perhaps his most interesting book The Ballad of Gussie and Clyde, about his parents.

    Numerous articles of his have appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and New Yorker  magazine.

    He is married to Lesley Stahl, a long time celebrity on CBS’s 60 Minutes.   They have a daughter, Taylor.

     In 1987 Aaron founded Huckleberry Finn Books which published children’s books centered around a series of stories told to he and his sister by Mrs. Latham which featured prairie dogs, jackrabbits, field mice, ground squirrels, coyotes, badgers, civet cats, polecats, and rattlesnakes.   The first of the books was Grandma Prairie Dog’s Unexpected Visitor.

          Aaron’s sister, Von Sharon is said to have written the definitive history of the Washington Redskins.  She was killed in an automobile wreck in the early 80s. 

       Aaron’s parents retired to their hometown of Spur in the 80s.