Toby Smith, talented and prolific journalist, dies at 78

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during a Toby Smith interview.

Smith, a longtime Albuquerque Journal sports and features writer and a prolific freelance writer, died Tuesday from a stroke and complications of Alzheimer’s. He was 78.

Paul Logan, a close friend and a longtime colleague at the Journal, said in a phone interview that Smith’s gifts as a journalist far transcended a mere facility with words — a quality he had in spades.

Before a single word went into the computer or onto the printed page, there was the art of the interview.

“The secret to Toby’s success, I think, was how quickly he related to those he interviewed,” Logan said. “Once (his subjects) were comfortable, he used his ability as a good listener to get people to open up.”

The interviewees’ words, and those of Smith, combined to produce a dazzling body of work. While it can’t be proven, it seems likely that Smith was the most decorated Albuquerque journalist in history — the recipient of dozens of local, state, regional and national writing awards during his almost 30 years at the Journal.

Those awards were bestowed by fellow journalists, but readers took notice as well.

A Journal reader from Corrales wrote the following in response to an August 1994 Smith column about Albuquerque recreational runner Ben Gonzales, who’d been killed when struck by a car on his morning run:

“Because of the quality of Ben’s life and Toby’s writing,” the woman wrote, “Ben’s story lives in our hearts and minds and underlies something we need to remember.

“… I wonder how many of us will be so fortunate at the end of our lives to have a Toby Smith who may say in print or otherwise: Pay attention. This life was worth living.”

Smith and his wife, Susan, came to Albuquerque from New York in 1976. Logan said Smith had been offered a job at a magazine. When that offer fell through, Smith caught on at the Journal.

Logan, then the Journal’s sports editor, brought Smith on part time.

“But that didn’t last long,” he said. “(Editors) discovered his talent, and he left (sports) and became a full-time feature writer.”

From 1980-88, Smith wrote for the Journal’s semi-weekly Impact Magazine. A reporter and not just a feature writer, he took on controversial subjects — drawing praise from readers on one side of an issue and brickbats from those on the other — when called upon.

Logan, who worked with Smith at Impact after leaving sports, said his friend and colleague sometimes clashed with editors — taking them to the mat about changes in his copy.

“It spoke for Toby fighting for what he believed in,” Logan said. “He fought for his story when he felt an overzealous person was editing.”

One editor, Logan recalled, pledged that he’d edit Smith’s work so smoothly and skillfully that the author wouldn’t even notice the changes.

Nope.

“Toby knew what he’d written,” Logan said, “and he knew what an editor had screwed with.”

After Impact folded in 1988, Smith returned to the sports department, writing features and columns and making the offbeat story his specialty — reporting on an outhouse race in Clovis, sailing on Elephant Butte lake and rafting on the Rio Grande near Pilar.

In 1998, Smith left the Journal for a five-year sojourn that took him to Columbus, Ohio, on a James Thurber fellowship; Bucharest, Romania on a Fulbright grant; Paris as a copy editor for the International Herald Tribune; and Seoul, where he taught journalism in an English-as-a-second-language curriculum. Smith taught at UNM as well.

He returned to Albuquerque in 2003, rejoining the Journal as a features writer. He later came back to sports before retiring in 2010.

Since his retirement, as well as during his career with the Journal, Smith wrote and had published at least 14 books.

Smith’s fascination with Albuquerque boxing legend Johnny Tapia prompted his writing of “Kid Blackie: Jack Dempsey’s Colorado Days,” and “Crazy Fourth: How Jack Johnson Kept His Title and Put Las Vegas, New Mexico on the Map.”

There was “Little Gray Men: Roswell and the Rise of a Popular Culture,” and “Coal Town: The Life and Times of Dawson, New Mexico.”

Other books, like “New Mexico Odyssey” and “Dateline New Mexico,” essentially were collections of Smith’s features and columns originally written for the Journal.

Reviewers of Smith’s books were struck by the same “people skills” that made him such a successful newspaper reporter.

One such reviewer, writing about “Coal Town,” wrote: “Smith knows you have to get acquainted with the people who live in a place before it can really interest you.”

Another reviewer, more succinctly: “Smith knows how to get people to talk to him.”

Smith’s work ethic, Logan said, never failed to amaze him.

“I don’t know how he found time to teach, work full time at the Journal and write (all those) books,” he said.

Smith never failed to find time, as well, for his family: his wife and their two sons, Jedediah and Carson.

Growing up as Toby’s son, Carson Smith said, was never dull.

“My dad,” Carson Smith said, “was kind of a wisenheimer. He was very creative, both as a writer and as a father coming up with games to keep us engaged.

“Yeah, good dad.”

His father, he said, didn’t just write about sports. He participated.

An avid runner and an accomplished tennis player, so much so that he taught the sport, Smith once won a “Superstars” style competition staged by the Albuquerque Publishing Co.

Dick Johnson, the longtime tennis coach at La Cueva High School, said Smith had served for several years as a Bears volunteer junior-varsity coach.

“He was always really supportive of the tennis community,” Johnson said in a phone interview. “Just a lovely man.”

Carson Smith said his father, always an avid collector, had filled the den of the family home with tennis racquets.

“He loved the sport of tennis from a young age, and just started collecting all these wooden racquets,” the younger Smith said. “Now, our den is kind of a tennis museum.”

Smith was a lifelong fan of the New York football Giants.

“I remember him taking me to several games in Arizona, when the Giants played the Cardinals,” Carson Smith said. “We’d stay at their hotel and tried to autograph-hound.”

Smith’s love for sports and an active lifestyle, Carson Smith said, never left him as his health deteriorated. Even as he was overtaken by Alzheimer’s, he said, his dad could still play a mean game of ping-pong.

“He couldn’t keep track of the scores anymore,” he said, “but that muscle memory was still there.”

In his final days, Carson Smith said, the firm grip his father had developed playing racquet sports remained.

“It was still there,” he said, “when we were staying goodbye.”

Smith is survived by his wife, Susan; sons Jedediah and Carson; an older brother, Thomas, and a younger sister, Julie.

A memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. on March 15 at First Presbyterian Church, 215 Locust NE.