Longtime County Times Reporter Don Smith Dies

Don Smith, who loved Orange County and recorded its history for 34 years as a reporter for The Times, died at home Thursday of emphysema. He was 71.

“He was Mr. Orange County,” said his longtime friend and reporting partner Don Angel. “He loved the county passionately, and he was interested in keeping it clean, straight and honest.”

In 43 years as a reporter, bureau chief, political writer, assistant city editor and restaurant critic, Smith won 39 Orange County Press Club writing and photography awards. He was honored twice by The Los Angeles Times with its annual awards for best writing and reporting. This April, he received a special press club award for outstanding lifetime achievement.

“I’ve said every day of my life in this business, I never had a job that was more fun,” Smith said after accepting the award. “It was fun every day.”

After covering Orange County for the Fullerton News Tribune and the Orange County Register, Smith joined the Orange County staff of The Times in 1956, where his byline appeared regularly for three decades.

“He symbolized journalism in Orange County,” said Robert G. Magnuson, president of The Times Orange County Edition. “Don was an institution in Orange County, and a model for everybody who followed him. His career spanned four decades, and he will be sorely missed.”

Smith grew up in La Habra, the only child of a homemaker and a lumber businessman. He graduated from Fullerton High School and Fullerton College, and except for three years in the Navy, lived his entire life in the county.

Smith wanted to be a jazz trumpet player, but discovered by reading a musicians union booklet that the market already was saturated in the Los Angeles area. A journalism professor told him he was a fine writer, and encouraged him to go into the profession.

“That was it, for the rest of his life,” said his wife, Vi, who also worked at The Times Orange County.

Columnist Jerry Hicks said Don and Vi Smith “were the heart and soul of the edition.”

Hicks recalled in a column this year how surprised he was when Smith, then assistant city editor, returned from vacation and the entire newsroom burst into applause.

Smith also taught journalism at Cal State Fullerton, finagling scholarships for students.

But he was an institution when it came to reporting.

“He knew more about the ins and outs of how Orange County worked than anybody, I think,” said Times staff writer Steve Emmons. “I mean, he went back to the days when Harbor Boulevard stopped at the Santa Ana River. He covered county government single-handed for The Times, and there were plenty of people in county government who didn’t know as much about it as he did.”

Angel, who shared a basement office in the old county courthouse building with Smith, recalled that his colleague “used to come downstairs from covering a Board of Supervisors meeting, and he’d stick a sheet of paper in the typewriter and type, ‘You wouldn’t believe what those dumb ***s did today.’ After getting that out of his system, he’d put in another piece of paper and write a straight-up story.”

Smith also would take cub reporters sent to the courthouse and show them “the ropes, keep them from drowning,” Angel said. The practice became so common it was called “The Don Smith School of Journalism.”

“I never knew anyone who loved journalism as much as Don did,” said Emmons.

William Nottingham, editor of The Times Orange County Edition, said Smith “set a sterling example for those of us who follow in his journalistic footsteps. As he reached the minds of the readers he wrote for, as a Times man for decades, he touched the hearts of the people he worked with. We will miss him.”

Smith, like many former journalists, was a heavy cigarette smoker, his wife said, and it cost him.

“Many times he’d be sitting in front of me in the newsroom with three or four cigarettes lit at once,” she said.

After nearly dying of pulmonary diseases in 1985, Smith finally quit, and became a crusader against smoking, urging colleagues to quit. He followed the lawsuits against the tobacco industry with interest, and was pleased with the historic settlement this month, his wife said.

“He just knew . . . firsthand that nicotine was the most addictive drug in the world,” she said.

He is survived by his wife and children, Janette Smith of Hemet, Matthew of Venice and Michael Richard of Morongo Valley; his stepchildren, Lawrence Kastner, Gene Kastner, Michelle Kastner and Christy Kastner; nine step-grandchildren, and two step great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are being made through Fairview Memorial Park and Mortuary in Orange. Donations may be sent to the Orange County chapter of the American Lung Assn.