[Article: Yeardley Smith's Dad]

 From: Carl Frank
 Date: Mon, 07 Aug 95

In the Aug. 4, 1995 edition of the Washington City Paper -- a free weekly -- the lead article was about those in town that write obits, e.g., for the Washington Post, Times, etc. The article included the the following paragraphs descrbing the Post's obit department.

The first chief was J.Y. Smith, whose own obituary probably will mention that his daughter, the actress Yeardley Smith, got her name from his middle name. (Hers will no doubt mention that she was the voice of Lisa Simpson.) Smith, who had come to the _Post_ in 1965 from United Press International, didn't seek out the obituary chief's job. But it grew on him, and he helped the bureau grow into what it is today. In April of this year, he began working at home, dedicating his time to advancers. He spends between a week and a month on each story. He suggests, tounge-in-cheek, that his efforts prolongs lives.

"One of the corollaries of writing advancers is that as soon as we do one, we guarantee that the subject gets X amount of additional life," Smith explains. "When the Duchess of Windson was 83, she was hospitalized with pneumonia, and I'm sure a flurry of obituaries were prepared. She lived to be 90."

Like other _Post_ obituarists, Smith says he loves to chronicle lives that are over. "If you like to write, there is hardly a better subject than life itself," he says. "Death may be an occasion for sadness, but the subject of an obituary is life itself and that is always wonderful. The life may be good or bad, but it is always wonderful."

"Take a retired admiral who was a destroyer skipper during World War II. He headed a flotilla, and there they were off the Komandorski Islands in the northwest Pacific. The U.S. force was outnumbered, and its flagship was dead in the water, with the Japanese fleet bearing down on them," he says. "The destroyers set off smoke and charged the Japanese ships with torpedoes and sent them to the bottom and our side won. It is something straight out of Horatio Hornblower. You could make movies out of this stuff."

The formula for reporting such a story is as simple and complicated as life itself. "You find out the admiral had been awarded the Navy Cross," Smith says. "You call the Pentagon's history section and they fax you a little outline biography that gives all his decorations and quotes from the citations. It is easy to figure out what he did. You look at [naval historian Samuel Eliot] Morison for concordance and you are home free. In a day in the life of a writer, do you want a better topic than that?"

Hey, anyone that likes Horatio Hornblower -- and is Yeardley dad -- can't be all bad.

Carl Frank