Memorial Note: Frederick Joseph Smythe, 1946-2026

By Guest Columnist Jon Meacham

He contained multitudes. Sweet and stubborn, charming and rugged, conservative and iconoclastic, strong and sometimes vulnerable, Rick Smythe was forever entwined with this place and its people; forever wed to this land, and to what grows out of it.

He was blessed with a world of his own—the world of Washington County—a world where he never doubted who he was, or what he was born to do. He loved the Delta—loved it with an elemental, enveloping passion, a passion so consuming that it’s difficult to discern where (or even whether) Rick Smythe left off and Mississippi began.

Let’s stipulate something. We are all children of God. We are all unique—and, as St. Paul tells us, we are all one in Christ. Yet honesty compels us to acknowledge that some people are more unique than others. And Rick was surely one of these.

To assess a character as various and as varied—yes, as unique—as Rick, one is tempted to resort to literature to explain this complicated man, this beguiling husband, father, grandfather, uncle, great-uncle, brother, coach, and friend.

Mississippi being Mississippi, you might expect to find something in William Faulkner or Walker Percy. Or perhaps in the lyrical canon of Willie Nelson or John Prine. Or perhaps in a bit of both—say, in Tennessee Williams or Don Williams. But perhaps the best way to understand the hardheaded yet soft-hearted Rick is with a son of Missouri who wrote of the river that makes this place possible, the place where we meet in the name of the Lord to see Rick to his rest. And that’s Mark Twain.

So, consider how Twain described Huckleberry Finn: “Huckleberry came and went at his own free will. He could go swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything that goes to make life precious that boy had.”

Everything that goes to make life precious, that boy had.

Rick had everything that goes to make life precious—and, even as he grew older, he retained a childlike wonder at the possibilities and poetry of human nature. And, like Huck, he came and went at his own free will.

Stories about this are legion. Details, it must be said, were not Rick’s strong suit. Neither was punctuality. Plans with Rick were not made with great conviction that his grasp of time was the one with which the rest of the world operated.

He even made God wait. In his childhood, in Leland, Big Dan and Margaret served lunch in the dining room. Each member of the family would stand behind their chair. Only when everyone was in the room, in their place, could the blessing be said and the meal begin. All of the children would be there. All but one. Danny, Hebe, and Randolph were on time; Rick rarely was. He often arrived late, grinning—and sometimes shirtless, which had to be corrected before the Lord could be thanked and lunch could be eaten.

He came and went at his own free will.

Rick’s insistence on his own way was likely learned at home, for Big Dan Smythe wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet or a meek conformist. When Big Dan took Rick to kindergarten for the first day, Rick somehow left the house without shoes.

“Mr. Smythe,” the teacher said, “we can’t allow Rick to come to school without shoes.”

Big Dan’s unflinching reply: “Then I guess Rick won’t be coming to school.”

It’s fair to say, then, that Smythe men march—even shoeless—to tunes of their own composition. But Rick liked others to dance, too, in joy and gladness. He practiced radical, even universal, hospitality. He created a baseball Field of Dreams for his grandchildren—and for anyone else who wanted to play. His doors were open to all comers; he was the most democratic of men—and before lightning strikes or anybody panics, let’s hasten to say that we mean small-d democrat.

He was the most eclectic of souls. Rick loved Guy Clark, Mountain Dew, the Leland All-Star baseball team, honeybuns, Native American history, pork-chop Thursdays at Fratesi’s, Marlboro Reds, checking his pivots, the congregation here at St. John’s, Fox News—at ear-splitting volume—the American flag, Waffle House, Civil War history—and Sherry Hawkins of Huntsville, Alabama, who became the steadfast, ever-patient Sherry Smythe of Tribbett, Mississippi.

He was an oak—a man whose height and sturdiness led his eldest grandchild, when asked as a toddler what he wanted to call his grandfather, to say, simply, “Tree.”

It stuck, and with good reason. Trees are inseparable from the soil. They bear fruit. They offer shade to the weary. Rick Smythe was inseparable from the soil. He bore fruit. He offered shade to the weary.

His connection to the Delta was organic. The family first came here decades before Fort Sumter; Rick himself was in some ways born in the wrong century. He had an agrarian vision of life more congruent with the world of Jefferson and Jackson than with iPhones and Instagram.

He loved talking politics—listening was another matter—and was himself a onetime combatant in the arena. In the 1977 city elections in Leland, Rick won a campaign for alderman by a thunderous landslide of 799 to 796—after a recount. (He stopped the steal.) The close-run nature of the race might have had something to do with the Smythe platform, or lack of one: The Delta Democrat Times reported that Rick “said he has no specific programs in mind at the moment.”

Make no mistake: To Rick, Leland and Tribbett were the center of the universe. Sewanee was their only conceivable rival. As another Washington Countian, William Alexander Percy, remarked, Sewanee “is so beautiful that people who have once been there always, one way or another, come back.” And Rick did, often.

It was there, at Sewanee, that he first evinced his scattershot mechanical ability by rigging the campus Pepsi machines to sell bottles of Bud and PBR, creating a demand-driven vending empire. The King of Beers never had a more loyal subject that the Rick Smythe of the late LBJ years.

He was attentive to the lonely, bringing them into the warmth of his company. He was always this way: as a junior at Episcopal High School, Rick intervened when other boys were shoving and mocking a smaller, shyer, more awkward freshman.

“Naw, this isn’t happening,” Rick said. “Leave him be.”

When that bullied boy became a man, there would be tears in his eyes as he told the story of how Rick Smythe had saved him.

He did the same on the diamond. He was devoted to the Leland baseball team—more accurately, he was devoted to the Leland baseball players. As a manager, Rick was not much competition for Casey Stengel or Joe Torre, but his players remember how his spirit, and the spirit he infused in them, was more important than any strategy.

“You need to understand,” one of these young men recalled, “we had never heard these words from a man in our life. He was the first man to tell us we could do something—and we believed him.”

Everything that goes to make life precious, that boy had.

Rick’s life was not a simple one; not a straightforward one; and surely not a perfect one. He knew heartbreak. He knew pain.

Yet he endured, living in hope, the way farmers must. All of life is fragile, contingent, chancy. But life on the land is particularly fraught; it’s an act of faith, a perennial test of resilience.

Crops can be good, or crops can be bad; disaster is always just a storm or a drought away; there can be feasts—or what seems like famine. No wonder things can feel topsy-turvy. No wonder the Delta breeds eccentricity. No wonder so many of you all are crazy.

We are gathered to commend Rick’s soul to a God who has promised that, in the fullness of time, He shall wipe away all tears from our eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.

Until that hour, we must tend to our grief with hope and with good cheer. For Rick Smythe is not dead; He dwells now with his Creator and his Redeemer—and has probably already kept the angels and archangels and all the company of Heaven waiting while he busts up a celestial beaver dam.

He came and went, at his own free will.

And, so he did last week, amid the punishing heat of summer. He went out to work, and he lay down, and he died—on his terms, in his way. He was not alone, for he was here, in his world, utterly at home, in fields that he loved. Dust to dust—yet also, through the mercy of God, strength to strength.

For life is not random, but sacred; not only of the flesh, but of the spirit. And that spirit, which is Rick’s spirit, lives; death can neither silence nor still his raspy, rich voice, his stubborn soul, his big heart.

With that voice and that soul and that heart Rick, in his Huck Finn way, went swimming when and where he chose, and stayed as long as it suited him. He sat up as late as he pleased, and he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; and, yes, he could swear wonderfully. And we know this: Everything that goes to make life precious, he had—and has, for he lives still—in heaven, and in the hearts of those who love him, and always will.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Delivered by Jon Meacham and St. John’s Episcopal Church in Leland on July 5, 2026. Memorial contributions for Rick may be made to St John’s Episcopal Church, P.O. Box 267, Leland, MS 38756; or to Leland Chamber of Commerce, P. O. Box 67, Leland, MS 38756.