Albert Merriman Smith, better known by his professional name, Merriman Smith, was born in Savannah, Georgia, on February 10, 1913. He attended elementary and secondary schools in Savannah and entered Oglethorpe University in Atlanta in 1931. Simultaneous with his entrance into college, Smith began his career in professional journalism as a sportswriter for the now defunct Atlanta Georgian until 1933.
Leaving Oglethorpe in 1934, his junior year, Smith became a feature writer for the Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine. He held this position until 1935, when he was hired as managing editor of the Athens (Georgia) Daily Times. The following year, he joined United Press (later United Press International). Until late 1940 he filled a number of assignments in the South including coverage of the Georgia and Florida state legislatures. During the period leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Smith was transferred from the Atlanta bureau to Washington, D.C. Thereafter, he reported on the activities of six Presidents. In addition to day-to-day coverage of Presidential news, Smith wrote a column for United Press International (UPI) entitled “Backstairs at the White House” that dealt with some of the interesting sidelights on the first families. Merriman Smith's only break from this assignment in over thirty years lasted seven months during 1958 when he reported on the national recession and the Sherman Adams-Bernard Goldfine political scandal.
During his decades in the nation's capital, Smith was an on-the-scene observer of many of the major events of his time. In 1941 he supplied the public with details of the disaster at Pearl Harbor. He accompanied President Franklin D. Roosevelt on wartime trips in and out of the United States. In recognition of his coverage of the death of Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1945, Smith was presented with the 1946 National Headliners Award. During the administration of President Harry S. Truman, Smith covered such major events as the Potsdam Conference in 1945 and the meeting between the President and General Douglas MacArthur on Wake Island in 1950. He was with President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower in Korea in 1952 and later reported on Eisenhower's activities at home as well as at the Bermuda Big Three Conference in 1953, the NATO Council of 1957 in Paris, and the 1960 summit in Paris. In addition, Smith accompanied the President on all of his foreign tours. In 1961 he was with President John F. Kennedy at meetings with Charles de Gaulle and Nikita Khrushchev. In 1960 UPI assigned him to cover both the national Democratic and Republican conventions. For his detailed, firsthand coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy Smith was awarded the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for “distinguished reporting of national affairs.” Shortly before leaving office President Johnson awarded Smith the Medal of Freedom, the highest award given to civilians.
In addition to his regular reports and columns, Smith wrote articles for most of the major national magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, This Week, and Nation's Business. He has also appeared frequently as a panelist on national television and radio shows, and was in frequent demand as a public speaker. Smith also found time to write five books dealing with the Presidency. In his first book, Thank you, Mr. President (1946), Smith presented his impressions of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman and their relationships with the press. He depicted Roosevelt as a great man, while Truman was described as a typical American. Smith further described the daily routine in the White House in A President Is Many Men (1948). His Meet Mr. Eisenhower (1956) was the first full-length work about Eisenhower to appear after his election victory. Eisenhower's travels during 1959 and 1960, on which Smith accompanied him, were the subject of A President's Odyssey (1961). The Kennedy administration is the subject of The Good New Days; a Not Entirely Reverent Study of Native Habits and Customs in Modern Washington (1962).
In 1937 Merriman Smith married Eleanor Doyle Brill and they had three children: Merriman Jr., Timothy, and Allison. They later divorced. In 1966 Smith's oldest son, a helicopter pilot, was killed in Vietnam. In 1966 Smith married Gailey Johnson and they had a daughter, Gillean. Smith died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 13, 1970 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
