Merriman Smith

Albert Merriman Smith (February 10, 1913 – April 13, 1970) was an American wire service reporter, notably serving as White House correspondent for United Press International and its predecessor, United Press. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 by Lyndon B. Johnson.[1][2]

Merriman Smith
Smith in 1962
Born(1913-02-10)February 10, 1913
Savannah, Georgia
DiedApril 13, 1970(1970-04-13) (aged 57)
Washington, D.C.
NationalityAmerican
OccupationJournalist
Awards

Background

Albert Merriman Smith was born on February 10, 1913, in Savannah, Georgia.[3]

Career

Known by his middle name (and his nickname, "Smitty"), Smith covered US presidents from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Richard Nixon and originated the practice of closing presidential news conferences with "Thank You, Mr. President," which was the title of his 1946 book, written during his coverage of the Harry Truman administration.[2] That honor, accorded the senior wire service reporter present at presidential news conferences, became more popularly known when it was continued by Smith's UPI colleague Helen Thomas.[3]

Smith began covering the White House in 1940. After the United States entered the Second World War, he was designated as one of the wire service reporters to follow the president on all his travels. They agreed for security purposes not to file their stories until after each trip had ended. Consequently, Smith was in Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945, and filed one of the first reports on the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[4]

On November 22, 1963, Smith was the main UPI reporter in Dallas for John F. Kennedy's visit. He traveled in the motorcade in the White House Pool car, which had a radiotelephone.[5] When the shots were fired, Smith grabbed the phone and called the UPI office.[6] He stayed on the phone while Jack Bell, the AP reporter in the car, started punching Smith and yelling at him to hand the phone over.[7][5] At 12:34 PM CST, four minutes after the presidential shooting, the report went out over UPI wire.[5] In 1964, he received the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy.[8] He was the first to publicly use the term "grassy knoll" regarding the assassination.[9]

In the 1960s, Smith was a frequent guest on television interview programs hosted by Jack Paar and Merv Griffin. Smith was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.

Death

Despondent over the death of his son in the Vietnam War and perhaps suffering from PTSD as a result of witnessing the Kennedy assassination, Smith died at his home in Alexandria, Virginia, on April 13, 1970, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.[10] Although he never served in the military himself, his grave is in Section 32 of Arlington National Cemetery next to his son's, by special permission of the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington.

Merriman Smith Memorial Award

In 1970, the White House Correspondents' Association established The Merriman Smith Memorial Award for excellence in presidential news coverage under deadline pressure.[11] His name was removed from the award in 2022 because of his support of excluding Black and female journalists from membership in the National Press Club and from attending the White House Correspondents' Dinner.[12]

Works
  • Thank You, Mr. President: A White House Notebook (1946,[13] 1976[14])
    • Danke sehr, Herr Präsident! Notizbuch aus dem Weissen Haus (1948)[15]
  • President is Many Men (1948)[16]
  • Meet Mister Eisenhower (1955)[17]
  • President's Odyssey (1961,[18] 1975[19])
  • Good New Days (1962)[20]
  • News Media – A Service and a Force (1970)[21]
  • Merriman Smith's Book of Presidents: A White House Memoir (1972)[22]

See also

References
  1. Judy Muhlberg (June 14, 1976). "Medal of Freedom" (PDF). Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum. p. 43. Retrieved May 11, 2020.
  2. Joe Alex Morris (1957). "Deadline Every Minute The Story Of The United Press".
  3. "Helen Thomas honored". The Pittsburgh Press. June 24, 1985. p. A2.
  4. Donald A. Ritchie (2005), Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, p. 121.
  5. Sanderson, Bill. "Merriman Smith's account of JFK's assassination". www.pulitzer.org.
  6. Sanderson, Bill (2013). "Fifty Years Ago This Minute: How the Assassination Story Broke". Observer. Retrieved 4 September 2018.
  7. "How this forgotten journalist scored the 20th century's biggest scoop". nypost.com. 6 November 2016.
  8. Sanderson, Bill (1 November 2016). Bulletins from Dallas: Reporting the JFK Assassination. Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-1510712645.
  9. Pages documenting this are held by Gary Mack, the curator of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.
  10. Lim, Young Joon; Sweeney, Michael S. (2016). "UPI's Merriman Smith may have suffered from PTSD". Newspaper Research Journal. 37 (2): 113–123. doi:10.1177/0739532916648956.
  11. "2013 WHCA Journalism Award Winners". whca.press. White House Correspondents’ Association. Retrieved March 11, 2022.
  12. Farhi, Paul (March 11, 2022). "His reporting on the Kennedy assassination made him a legend. Then a press group looked into his past". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 11, 2022.
  13. Smith, A. Merriman (1946). Thank You, Mr. President: A White House Notebook. Harper & Brothers.
  14. Smith, A. Merriman (1976). Thank You, Mr. President: A White House Notebook. Da Capo Press.
  15. Smith, A. Merriman (1948). "translation (Herbert Mühlbauer)". Thank You, Mr. President: A White House Notebook. Vienna: Humboldt.
  16. Smith, A. Merriman (1948). President is Many Men. Harper.
  17. Smith, A. Merriman (1955). Meet Mister Eisenhower. Harper.
  18. Smith, A. Merriman (1961). President's Odyssey. Harper.
  19. Smith, A. Merriman (1975). President's Odyssey. Greenwood Press.
  20. Smith, A. Merriman (1962). Good New Days: A Not Entirely Reverent Study of Native Habits and Customs in Modern Washington. Bobbs-Merrill.
  21. Smith, A. Merriman; Smith, Howard K.; Elliot, Osborn (1970). News Media – A Service and a Force. Memphis State University Press.
  22. Smith, A. Merriman (1972). Timothy G. Smith (ed.). Merriman Smith's Book of Presidents: A White House Memoir. WW Norton.
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