“When whales jump up out of the water, do they do it accidentally or porpoisely?” — One of Dr. A.O. Goldsmith’s idle thoughts from one of his last columns published in the Daily Dunklin Democrat in Kennett, Mo.

Dr. A.O. Goldsmith became one of my heroes when he told me he never understood the good in diagraming sentences, and never could really

do it himself.

I mean, he could do it. I could do it when I had to for a grammar test in school, but for the most part neither one of us really “got it” so to speak.

Because he let me know that, I realized I wasn’t really a freak among the world of those who made their living with words. Soon I would find lots of other reasons for him to be one of my heroes.

His nickname among us at the paper up in Kennett, Mo., was Dr. Wordsmith. He wrote columns for the paper. He grew up around that Missouri Bootheel and Northeast Arkansas area where I’m from. He’d written a couple of books, one a book of poetry, the other a humorous look at the development of our language called “Demeaning of Words.”

I especially appreciated his advice, wisdom, suggestions, criticism, praise and shared contempt for diagramming sentences during the seven

years I knew him because he was a longtime newsman.

As a kid he worked as a printer’s devil for the newspaper on Saturdays and during summers.

After his high school graduation in 1926 he became a printer, editorial writer and columnist for the newspaper, now the Daily Dunklin Democrat, until 1937, when he began working at the Arkansas Democrat in Little Rock as a linotype operator. He also wrote a column, “Arkanstuff” for 30 newspapers in Arkansas.

As was the case with so many people of his generation, a little thing called World War II came along and sidetracked his career from 1942 to 1945.



The war years



As a staff sergeant in Troop C, 16th Cavalry, of General George S.Patton’s Third Army, he helped push the Germans across the Rhine and about halfway to Berlin.

He told me the story of how he was helping to line up a bunch of German soldiers who’d been captured so that they could be loaded on a truck that was coming for them. The Germans didn’t know that, though. They thought they were being lined up to be executed. Many of them were crying and begging for their lives. The American soldiers were trying to explain what was about to happen the best they could. It was chaos until the truck arrived and everyone was on the same page, so to speak.

Like most of Dr. Goldsmith’s stories, this one had a humorous twist. After the Germans were loaded into the back of the truck, the driver

took off, leaving Dr. Goldsmith behind. He goes running behind the truck, yelling for the driver to wait up. The driver can’t hear him and starts gaining speed. So, still chasing the truck, Dr. Goldsmith handed his rifle up to one of the Germans and another couple of prisoners grabbed him and pulled him up into the truck with them.

He thanked them as they dusted him off and handed him back his rifle.

After the war he returned to the Arkansas Democrat and wrote a glowing tribute to Ol’ Blood and Guts Patton. Stars and Stripes reran it and I was privileged to see the wonderful thank you letter Patton sent him back. It was one of the last letters Patton would write. It was dated just before Patton was paralyzed in an automobile crash in Germany on Dec. 9, 1945. He died 12 days later.



Life’s lessons



Dr. Goldsmith went on to earn his undergraduate degree and master’s in journalism from Louisiana State University. He was awarded his doctorate in mass communication by the University of Iowa in 1967.

He was director of LSU’s school of journalism from 1968 until his retirement as director-professor emeritus in 1974.

In 1975, he was named to the LSU Journalism Hall of Fame.

He went back to where he started, as printer’s devil, and began writing a column for the Daily Dunklin Democrat in 1977, continuing until April 2005 when illness prevented him from continuing.

Dr. Goldsmith passed away just before Christmas that year. There aren’t many days in the newsroom I don’t think of Dr. Goldsmith for one reason or another. I learned a lot from him between the time I first met him in 1994, and last saw him in 2001.

If he were still with us he’d be celebrating his 100th birthday this year.

Dr. Goldsmith respected grammar and rules of writing, but, he wasn’t uptight about it, and like a lot of great writers he wouldn’t have let it get in the way of relaying a great story.

When I was a senior in high school we had several nominations for class song to consider. We were going to vote to decide. On the ballot the school secretary put “Do You Know Where You’re Going?” as one of the choices. I pointed out it was suppose to be the theme from Mahogany, “Do You Know Where You’re Going To?” by Diana Ross.

She refused to change it. She said she didn’t care what it was called, it was wrong because you don’t end a sentence with a preposition.

My argument that it wasn’t a sentence, it was a song title, didn’t matter. Even when I pointed out “Free Bird,” another nominee by Lynyrd Skynyrd, wasn’t a complete sentence, yet hadn’t been tampered with, she still wouldn’t change it.

Communicating with the written word is an art form, it’s not like math, you need to be able to bend a little. Sometimes you just have to forget the rules, jump in and see what happens.

Which, brings me to my all-time favorite Dr. Goldsmith story — his first brush with a great writer.

It was in the late 1920s. He was walking along one of the many floodway ditches where Arkansas meets the Missouri Bootheel.

Dr. Goldsmith spotted a guy fishing in a boat. When the fisherman saw the young fella looking at him, he rowed his boat over to the bank where Dr. Goldsmith was, and said: “Get in!”

Dr. Goldsmith got in the stranger’s boat. He said the fisherman drank and fished a lot. Dr. Goldsmith enjoyed the boat ride, took fish off the fisherman’s hook for him, and put bait back on it. And that’s how Dr. Goldsmith met Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer of Piggott, Ark. (his second of four wives), in 1927. They lived there until 1931 when they moved to Key West, Fla.



Steve Gillespie is managing editor of The Meridian Star. E-mail him

at sgillespie@themeridianstar.com.