Al Smith’s memoir worth reading

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Ronnie Ellis

November 5, 2011

By Ronnie Ellis CNHI News Service The Richmond Register Sat Nov 05, 2011, 08:44 AM EDT

FRANKFORT — Al Smith calls himself an “engaged journalist” in his long-awaited memoir “WORDSMITH: My Life in Journalism.” The self-description and the subtitle fall a bit short but the book doesn’t.

Smith’s is a remarkable story of a remarkable life, lived on a stage larger than journalism or the set of his long-running show on KET, Comment on Kentucky, or the mastheads of his weekly newspapers. It records a brutal struggle through inherited and early alcoholism, lost jobs, lost chances on the way to sobriety, success and stature. Along the way, he encounters an incredible cast of sometimes well-known and always unique people, the kind who, like Smith himself, make life worth living.

That story begins in the Florida of Smith’s youth, where Dizzy Dean, a heavyweight champion, and the founder of the Flying Wallendas are regulars at his parents’ weekly poker games. It winds through Tennessee, where the reader meets his paternal grandparents, especially Grandmother Graeme McGregor Smith, who pushes him to win a national oratorical contest and travel across the country giving the speech and encountering notables like General George C. Marshall. He’s bounced out of Vanderbilt – twice – squandering a scholarship and lands in New Orleans where he finds work as a copy boy and gets serious about both journalism and drinking.

While working as a reporter and editor on two big city papers, he encounters intimates of William Faulkner, covers Louisiana Gov. Earl Long, interviews and drinks with Robert Penn Warren, and is job-shadowed by British actor Alec Guinness, the future Obi-Wan Kenobi of Star Wars. He is assigned an intern, Hodding Carter III, who goes on to help elect Jimmy Carter president and serve in his administration. Smith, by then a weekly newspaper editor in Russellville, is “engaged” in promoting Carter’s Kentucky campaign.

Smith came to Russellville because his drinking got him fired in New Orleans. Depressed and broke, he lived in a rent-by-the-week hotel room, encounters political strongman Doc Beauchamp, and eventually finds his way to AA and sobriety. That’s when his “second life” began.

Smith always said his memoir should be a two-volume set, the first a biography of his drunken life, the second of his sober one – “because I lived two lives.” His publisher and Dr. Thomas Clark persuaded him to put both into one elegantly written book. In his second life, Smith rises from a weekly editor perpetually on the brink of unemployment because of alcoholism to sober newspaper owner, family man and state and national influence (all with help from his remarkable and gracious wife, Martha Helen). He is appointed chairman of the Appalachian Research Commission – by President Carter – directing money to his adopted state and taking on Washington bureaucracy and regional poverty.

Smith found, befriended and mentored small-town journalists, some of whom went on to larger stages but all of whom became better journalists – and people – because of Smith.

You see, there are plenty of interesting people in Smith’s life, larger than life political figures and characters. There are personal achievements: conquering alcoholism, professional success, status as one of Kentucky’s wise men. His influence reaches into halls of power and extends beyond “engaged journalism.”

But what Al Smith really does is live an engaged, inquisitive life which changes and enriches other lives and his state. The man, his life and his writing are works of art from which others grow wiser and bigger by sharing. Maybe you aren’t blessed as I am to have come under the direct influence of Albert P. Smith, but you can read his memoir. You’ll be better for having done so.

Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort. Reach him at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.

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Al Smith’s memoir worth reading

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