SAN ANGELO, Texas — (Editor's note: The attached video originally aired in February 2019)
Rick Smith, former San Angelo Standard-Times columnist, has died at the age of 67. The newspaper confirmed Smith died Sunday in Silverton, Oregon, where he and his wife, June, moved to be closer to their daughters.
Smith was a graduate of San Angelo Central High School and Angelo State University.
For decades, countless Standard-Times readers started their days with a Rick Smith column. Smith told the stories of their hometown, their families and their friends and neighbors. He became a member of everyone's household for years.
When he would take the occasional day off or the very rare sick day, editors would have to run a "Where's Rick" note in the place where his column normally ran.
"If Rick Smith wasn't in the paper, people wondered what was going on, where was he?," former Standard-Times Managing Editor Anthony Wilson said in a February 2019 interview. "And so, we did start running that column bug that just said, 'Where's Rick', and explaining, 'Well, he's on vacation.' It was almost as if we hadn't run the comics, or the crossword puzzle, or the obits on a particular day."
"He was just part of their morning and daily routine," Wilson said.
In May 2019, Smith and his wife, June, took former FOX West Texas anchor Camille Requiestas on one of Rick's famous wildflower tours - this time to Christoval and Eldorado. Because Smith had been diagnosed with dementia, June gave the tour.
"He started this the first time when he was there (Standard-Times) and that was from about '73-74 to 1980. He would do the wildflower tour, we called it the 'bluebonnet tour' more often than that," June said in that interview. "Because that was the big spotting that he'd try to do."
Rick's former roommate, coworker and friend, Roy Ivey shared these thoughts about Rick:
"The first time I saw Rick, he came into the Standard-Times to help take track agate, I believe. He had a big ol' smile and exuded that signature joviality that was his trademark. We got on well, and that fall, he helped me compile the area report for football. At first, I wrote the intro into the report and he compiled some of the stats. Soon, he was doing some of the writing and lobbied for a byline which I was glad to share because his talent was clear from the get-go. That was the first of many bylines, and he quickly grew into a star at the S-T. At one point, he needed a place to stay, and since I rented rooms in my house out to S-T'ers, he asked if he could stay there. At the time, it was a full house, but he said he would take the garage even though it was unheated and in the dead of winter. He didn't care, so he set up a cot and some bookshelves, and seemed happy as a lark. That was his outlook on life, it seems to me. Take an unheated garage and turn it into a domicile. Because there was always a parade of journalists coming through my house, many of whom had the offbeat, maverick outlook on life common to journalists, Rick gave me a wooden plaque that he made out of a piank of 2x8 lumber. He stained and inscribed it with a soldering iron: "Through these portals pass some the strangest people in the world." In his case, one of the most brilliant writers I ever had the pleasure to know passed through those portals. He was always innovative in everything he did, not only in his writing, but everything else he attempted, and made it look easy. He and June moved on with their lives, and I went to visit them when I could. June was going to graduate school in Austin and Rick became a hit at the American-Statesman. I wasn't surprised by that. San Angelo hit the jackpot when the Smiths moved back, June at ASU and Rick at the S-T. He put out award-winning stories, columns and features throughout his tenure at the S-T, and became as close to a rock star in West Texas as a newspaper reporter could. He has passed through a new set of portals, and I'll bet he'll be a rock star writer there, too, if he so desires. R.I.P., my friend. The world won't soon see another like you. Vaya con Dios."
June told the Standard-Times a memorial service will be held April 23 at San Angelo's International Waterlily Collection.
Rick's obituary can be read here.