Jack Isenhour was born on August 16, 1944 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee where his father, a self-taught engineer, was involved in the production of the atomic bomb. At age six, his family moved to nearby Kingston where Isenhour graduated from Roane Country High School in 1962. Isenhour went on to West Point graduating in 1966 with a degree in General Engineering. While at the Academy, Isenhour played on Bob Knight's first college basketball team. Decades later that experience became the basis for his first book, Same Knight, Different Channel: Basketball Legend Bob Knight at West Point and Today, an account of Knight's first year at West Point and last days at Indiana.
Upon graduation from West Point, second lieutenant Isenhour volunteered for the infantry and spent two years in Vietnam and eighteen months in Germany before being honorably discharged as a captain in 1970. Decorations included the Combat Infantryman's Badge, Bronze Star for Valor, and two Bronze Stars for service.
Following his military service, Isenhour enrolled in graduate school at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville where he received a Masters Degree in Communications in 1973. An excerpt from his masters thesis, "The Effects of Context and Order in Film Editing," was published in Audio-Visual Communications Review, a prestigious academic journal.
After graduation, Isenhour worked at WATE-TV News in Knoxville as a reporter-photographer for four years before moving to WSM (now WSMV) television in Nashville in 1978. At WSMV, Isenhour was soon named Director of the Special Projects Unit and managed the eleven-person staff of reporters and photographers that produced over sixty news series and six documentaries each year. During Isenhour's tenure, the unit received many awards including television's highest honor, the Peabody Award, and was instrumental in WSMV being named the best television news operation in the United States by the Radio-Television News Directors Association in 1986.
Not content to just manage the department, Isenhour personally produced series and documentaries garnering many individual honors including national recognition by the American Bar Association, Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (national EMMY nomination) and the Atlantic City Press Club (Headliner Award.)
In 1988, Isenhour was hired as the Assistant News Director for Special Projects at WKRN-TV in Nashville, where he organized and then managed the series and documentary unit. While there, he continued producing documentaries, including "On Tour With the Grand Ole Opry" and "True Believers," an examination of the religious beliefs of faith healers and snake handlers. Isenhour continued his winning ways after leaving WKRN. In 1992, a documentary produced for Steve Hall Productions was honored by the United States Industrial Film and Video Festival.
In 1993, Isenhour moved to the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University where he was the co-creator and executive producer of FREEDOM SPEAKS, a nationally syndicated television talk show hosted by Sander Vanocur. The program aired on over a hundred PBS stations nationwide. When the show moved to New York in 1997, Isenhour remained in Nashville and became a fulltime writer. Same Knight, Different Channel: Basketball Legend Bob Knight at West Point and Today, was published by Brassey's. Inc. [now Potomac Books] Washington, D.C. in 2003. I Should Be Dead By Now (Sports Publishing LLC), written with Dennis Rodman, is a memoir covering the NBA rebounding phenom's comeback following years of hard partying AKA alcoholism. It was published in 2005. Isenhour's third book, He Stopped Loving Her Today: George Jones, Billy Sherrill, and the Pretty-Much Totally True Story of the Making of the Greatest Country Record of All Time is now available.