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Nieman Reports Winter 2006 Issue Nieman Notes Compiled by Lois Fiore A Nieman Classmate Reflects on Smith Hempstone Africa is a hard place to love, but Smith, I knew, did love it, and he wanted to make it a better place. By John Corry I had neither seen Smith Hempstone nor spoken with him since our 1964-1965 Nieman year, but one way or another I had been hearing about him ever since, and I counted myself as an admirer. He had been a first-rate journalist—as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily News and the Washington Star, associate editor of the Star, and editor in chief of the Washington Times, among other things—but that was only part of it. Africa is a hard place to love, but Smith, I knew, did love it, and he wanted to make it a better place. As the American ambassador to Kenya from 1989 to 1993, he did his best to advance democracy and restrain Daniel arap Moi, the very unattractive despot who ruled there. It would be an overstatement to say Smith succeeded in all this, but certainly he did try, and he left innumerable Kenyans grateful that he did. But a personal note: I am married to an Africanist, Jean Herskovits, and I spend much of my time now following her around Africa, especially in Nigeria, a country plagued by many of the same problems Smith had encountered in Kenya. Jean, a political liberal, has met many ambassadors, and she thinks the best ones work very quietly and do not draw attention to themselves. Against all expectations, Jean also admired the very conservative Smith Hempstone, who did not work at all quietly and drew attention to himself wherever he went. I don't think he could help it. In "Rogue Ambassador," his fine memoir, Smith wrote that he and his wonderful wife, Kitty, once spent a golden afternoon in 1954 at the Gritti Palace in Venice, drinking with Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Mary. "Speak Swahili? Been to Africa?" Hemingway asked him, and when Smith said no, Hemingway responded, "Too bad. You oughta go. Africa's man's country: hunt, fish, write. The best." And indeed, soon after that, Smith and Kitty did go to Africa, where Smith learned Swahili and hunted and fished and wrote. He became, so to speak, Hemingway-esque, and there was nothing fake, strained or ersatz about it; Smith was the genuine article. He was stocky and bearded with the beginning of a paunch and, in so many photographs, even when smiling he seemed to be squinting. In shorts and bush jacket, he looked a bit like Papa himself. And, as already noted, Smith was a conservative or, as an article in the International Herald Tribune once described him, an "arch-conservative," who championed "conservative orthodoxy." Nonetheless, while I do not know for certain what he thought about the neocon tough guys in Washington who want to send other people's children to war although they have never worn a uniform or been in harm's way themselves, it seems to me that he and they did not have much in common. Smith, who had seen combat as a Marine in Korea, did not just play at it; he really was a tough guy. He loved the Kurds, and in the first Gulf War he wanted to lead Kurdish troops into Baghdad. Washington, though, would have none of it. But as I said, although I knew what Smith had been doing, I had not seen or talked to him since our Nieman year. However, Ray Jenkins and Jim Doyle, our fellow Niemans, had been in touch with him, and when I e-mailed them that I would be in Washington, they suggested we all get together. Smith, they said fondly, was grumpy and irascible, and still a heavy smoker, but his health was failing, and he no longer got around much. So Ray, Jim and I went to Smith and Kitty's big old rambling house in Bethesda and had lunch. When I told Smith that Jean thought he had done a fine job in Kenya, he looked pleased. I was in Nigeria when he died shortly afterwards, and I thought how fortunate I had been for having been able to tell him that. John Corry, a 1965 Nieman Fellow, returned to The New York Times after Cambridge, stayed three years, and then went to Harper's magazine for three years. Then he returned to the Times, where he eventually became a television critic, specializing in news and documentaries. He left the Times in 1988. Table of contents Printer-friendly format |
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