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“He was, and still is, a hero of mine,” wrote Garrison Keillor. Fascinated that a “St. Paul boy” had made good, the well known writer/host of The Prairie Home Companion, first discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories while browsing a library at the age of 14. Born in 1896, Fitzgerald was named after the the writer of “The Star Spangled Banner”, Francis Scott Key. Growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, he started to write at St. Paul Academy in 1918. “The Mystery of the Raymond Mortgage” was his first published story and appeared in 1909 in Now and Then. Fitzgerald entered Princeton University in 1913, where he failed to become a football hero. At a diminutive height and weight of 5’7” tall and 138 pounds, he was better suited for the Triangle Club, which produced a musical every year. He left his studies in 1917 because of his poor academic records, and took up a commission in the US Army. The following year, while stationed at Camp Sheridian, near Montgomery, he met Zelda Sayre at a dance.
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