William Edgett Smith; Foreign Correspondent for Time
William Edgett Smith, a foreign correspondent and writer for Time magazine for 35 years, has died in a New York hospital. He was 62.
His wife, Genevieve Wilson Smith, attributed the cause of death on Thursday to cancerous tumors.
Smith was born and grew up in Glendale and graduated from Occidental College in 1953. His first job for Time was as an office boy in the magazine’s Los Angeles bureau.
Smith reported for Time from Alaska, India and Kenya, and in 1971 published a biography of Julius Nyerere, the founding president of Tanzania.
As a senior writer, Smith wrote the Time cover story which was the subject of a libel suit brought by former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. The magazine was accused of implying that he encouraged the Lebanese Phalangist murders in West Beirut refugee camps in 1982. Smith testified that Sharon “was the victim of an obsession” about the presence of the PLO in West Beirut.
Smith is survived by his wife and their daughter, Caroline Tanner Smith.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
