Life with Wilbur Journalist remembers his time with "grandpa' By ROBERT KERR/Special to the Gazette This is the first story I have ever written about Wilbur Smith that I did not want to write. I am pretty sure that in one way or another Wilbur figured in more of my stories than anyone else during my 20 years in the newspaper business. But more than that, he was one of the best friends I've ever had. I met Wilbur in the summer of 1981. I was a young reporter for the Gazette, looking around for local characters to profile. On that count, he qualified beyond my wildest dreams. Soon I began calling him whenever I had a question about local history. Wilbur was not a trained historian by any means. But he had lived in Texarkana all his life-and most of Texarkana's life. He loved the place so much that he had committed more about it to memory than anyone else I met in a decade or so of writing about Texarkana's past. Beyond committing so much to memory, he had filled the home where he and Edith lived on Hazel Street with endless pieces of local history. The entire attic was Wilbur's personal Texarkana archive, and the rest of the house a living museum. We would start our interviews in his dark, pine-paneled study. He would switch on an old goose-necked lamp, perched on his desk, and wait for my questions. Every one I ever asked him seemed to stir a hundred memories and he would proceed to share them all. In his prime, absolutely no one could out-talk Wilbur Smith. Not that all he did was talk. Every few moments, he would leap up and lead me up to the attic or off to some other corner of the house and show me one thing after another in an effort to illustrate his nonstop commentary. It would drive Edith crazy, having this tiny bundle of manic energy that was her husband ransacking every inch of her home for a visitor. But she knew better than anyone that it was simply impossible to deter his passion for telling Texarkana stories in the way that he wanted to tell them. As the years went by, I would allow more and more time for every interview. Despite our 50-year age difference, Wilbur and I developed a friendship that I came to value far more than the interviews. And I valued the interviews tremendously. He provided me details, background, leads and clarification on more stories than I could ever count now. One of my favorite projects at the Gazette was called "Still Standing," a continuing series in the late 1980s that documented Texarkana's oldest structures. Every one of the articles in that series began with my driving Wilbur around town as he pointed out buildings and recounted their pasts. I found that a reporter could get at just about anything in Wilbur's mind-eventually. I once called him a "professional meanderer" in tribute to the way that any question you asked him led through a dozen or more answers before it got to the one you had originally asked for. However, the truth was that I had long since lost interest in just getting questions answered. I had come to look forward to finding any excuse to visit Wilbur and let him meander wherever he chose. After I left Texarkana to work in Memphis and other cities, I kept visiting him whenever I was in town. I don't remember when Wilbur began calling me his adopted grandson, but ultimately that was truly what the relationship became. My own grandfathers were both gone by then, and he and Edith had no children. So whenever I was back in Texarkana, I could head over to Hazel Street and always be welcomed like a grandson. When the first Wilbur Awards were held in 1992, the organizers asked me to be there to surprise Wilbur with a few comments following a multimedia tribute that was shown to a full house at the Texarkana College auditorium. I'm still grateful that they truly captured what Wilbur's life meant in that tribute. And that they introduced me as his adopted grandson. I once wrote that I could imagine almost anything except a Texarkana without Wilbur Smith. Many great individuals have played vital and heroic roles in making Texarkana all that it is today. Yet all accomplishments too quickly fade into the past, unless someone cares enough to remember them and keep sharing them. In Texarkana's 20th Century, it was Wilbur Smith who cared longer than anyone else about keeping its past alive. As I said, this was the one story about Wilbur that I hoped I would never have to write. But I'm thankful the Gazette let me say farewell to a dear friend on the same pages where our friendship began. Goodbye, Grandpa Wilbur. For me, you will live in Texarkana always. (Former Texarkana Gazette writer and editor Robert Kerr is completing a doctorate in mass communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.)