Smyser a journalism legend
By John Griffin
Former editor of The Advertiser editorial pages
Adam A. Smyser, known to all as Bud, was Hawai'i's senior journalist and one of the Islands' three greatest newspaper editors of the 20th century.
For many important years, he was an activist who looked ahead and cared deeply about Hawai'i. So were the other two ö the late Riley Allen, Smyser's mentor on the Star-Bulletin, and Advertiser Editor George Chaplin, now retired in Virginia.
But Bud Smyser was more than just a key figure in the Star-Bulletin's surge to mid-century growth and a community leader who went on to write columns that chronicled Hawai'i's progress and problems.
Over some 55 years, he was a caring friend to a wide range of people and a guiding leader for several generations of journalists.
My own involvement with Bud goes back 50 of those years to when I was hired as a copy boy by the Star-Bulletin, where he was assistant city editor. He was central in my moving up to cub reporter and later to the prime labor and politics beats.
In the process, he was also an aloha-minded leader who often entertained staffers with prime steaks and good scotch at his home. That same warmth to newcomers and old friends continued until his death yesterday at age 80.
Chaplin, his competitor and friend over three decades, summed it up in saying, "Bud was first rate in every way."
Many younger journalists prefer to keep a judgmental distance from community involvement. It's a view I have shared, even if it can seem a cop-out at times.
But Smyser, like Allen and Chaplin, came from a different and older school that fit Hawai'i well in the post-World War II era. It often seemed they were at every important breakfast, lunch, dinner meeting and reception, bridging various racial groups in the process.
Those activist editors got involved in government, sometimes serving on, even heading, commissions or committees and traveling abroad (and reporting on it) with legislators investigating tourism and other matters. In their heyday, it seemed you had to have Chaplin or Smyser or both involved in a project to guarantee its success.
Both as an editor and a columnist, Bud had his favorite issues. With Riley Allen, he pushed statehood to the max. He argued for civil rights. One pet cause he never got off the ground was the idea of a unicameral state Legislature, as Nebraska has.
In recent years, the issue of dying with dignity and doctor-assisted suicide has been his most frequent cause. It's fitting that his last column, in yesterday's Star-Bulletin, was on that subject. I hope new laws on the subject will someday be a memorial to Bud.
In a Hawai'i where most journalists and politicians have been liberals, Bud was often conservative, sometimes libertarian in his views. For a time he was a registered member of the GOP. We often differed and sometimes argued.
"He's a Republican, you know," former Democratic Gov. Jack Burns once said to me, as if it were some kind of permanent ailment.
Yet Bud Smyser was most notable as a straight shooter. Back in the red-scare 1950s, when he was assistant city editor, he once wrote a letter to the editor arguing against an editorial by Riley Allen critical of a judge who allowed bail in a political trial.
And when push came to shove in Vietnam in the 1970s, his Star-Bulletin was ahead of The Advertiser in opposing the war. As I recall, he was also first in calling for President Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal. I envied him in that, as in many other ways, over years of friendly competition.
People seldom die just the way they would like. But Bud went relatively fast and painlessly. He leaves great memories, a loving family, a newspaper he cared about deeply that still survives, and a legacy of journalism that influenced Hawai'i for over half a century.
