Fred Smith Of Wainscott, Cultural Pioneer, Dies At 93

Frederick Rutledge Smith, a pioneering figure in publishing who was a well-known writer and editor at many magazines of the 20th century, died at 93 on December 14, 2018, in his Wainscott home. His husband, Robert (Bob) Schaeffer, survives him. Mr. Smith was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 5, 1925, and in the many decades that followed he led a full life of adventure, style, accomplishment and far-flung travel to nearly every corner of the globe, experiencing and helping shape the changes that transformed American culture during those years.

In 1964, Mr. Smith created the spectacularly successful Swimsuit Issue for Sports Illustrated, where he served as a founding editor in the 1950s.

An avid sportsman, he skied the world’s most challenging slopes with Olympic champions and curated an exhibition of the finest sporting equipment at the Museum of Modern Art. He traveled to destinations both sophisticated and remote for professional assignments and often for pleasure, skiing, playing tennis, cruising on the Cunard Line’s Queen Mary II for his 80th birthday, and recently dropping in at the Paris home of Olivia de Havilland, a family friend of Mr. Schaeffer.

Mr. Smith moved comfortably among his acquaintances, who included Hollywood stars, socialites, towering fashion figures like Coco Chanel, writers and artists, and sports notables like Jean-Claude Killy—who affectionately called him “Fredo le Frite”—and Stein Eriksen. He derived much gratification from spending time with a wide circle of friends in East Hampton and New York City.

Mr. Smith was fond of telling his friends that he had achieved the most important thing in life: a sense of contentment, proclaiming, “Who has lived a better life? How lucky I have been!”

His journey took him from a farm boy childhood in the deep south during the Great Depression to the heights of professional achievement in New York City publishing when, as he would say, “magazine editing was a joy.” Even into his 70s, he continued to write about sports, travel, design and culture for Town & Country, Smithsonian, Snow Country, Ski, House Beautiful, and Departures.

Mr. Smith’s sense of adventure blessed his life and accompanied him in his travels, most frequently to Europe, where he conquered the best ski slopes in the French, Swiss, Austrian and Italian Alps, as well as those of Aspen and Squaw Valley, destinations he often skied with Mr. Schaeffer.

He was an early advocate of Les Trois Vallees, which before his editorial coverage was relatively under-appreciated by Americans, and where he fell in love with skiing in the powder off piste and taking turboprops to ski on glaciers.

He crossed Lake Titicaca in a humble steamer and took an old-fashioned Altiplano train across the Andes. He scoured the globe’s best beaches scuba-diving or scouting exotic locations in the Bahamas, Fiji, Tahiti and Bora Bora, many places where he would eventually lead photo shoots with such renowned photographers as Peter Beard, Jerry Cooke, Ernst Haas and Gordon Parks.

In his years directing the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, he played a significant role in the careers of many top models. When, years later, he encountered Christie Brinkley socially in East Hampton, she said, “You made my career!”

He rose through the ranks from editor and writer to an executive in publishing, eventually being named editor-in-chief of American Home, then president and editorial director of East-West Network, the now-defunct empire of inflight magazines which he helped create and from which he retired in 1990. Early in his magazine career, he worked for the Book-of-the-Month Club and True, where he persuaded Polly Adler, once New York’s most famous madam, to sell him the condensation rights to “A House Is Not a Home.” He termed it “my biggest coup!”

At the age of 84, he published his memoir, “The Road to Wainscott,” which still sells on Amazon. In it, Mr. Smith narrates his odyssey from his youth in Alabama, to his years in Army Air Corps, when he flew solo and learned to loop-the-loop in a Stearman open-cockpit biplane.

He moved to New York City after World War II, having graduated from the University of Alabama, where he attended a creative writing course with Harper Lee. Before Wainscott, he owned homes in Los Angeles and Sugarbush, Vermont, where he learned to ski, and rented a house for many years in Sagaponack.

In his 80s, Mr. Smith became an accomplished watercolorist, and in his 90s he showed his still lifes and landscapes at the Artist Members Exhibition at Guild Hall and in one-person shows at the libraries in Amagansett and East Hampton. He was a presence in the season at the Art Barge. He was also a loyal parishioner of St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Bridgehampton, and his ashes will be laid to rest there in the columbarium he helped conceive, drawing inspiration from Thomas Jefferson’s designs.

Fred Smith was born to Frederick Rutledge Smith and Mary Burton Matthews, and his family roots stretched from Alabama to Charleston, where three of his direct South Carolina ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence and built Middleton Place.

In addition to Mr. Schaeffer, he is survived by his sister, Burton Harris, and five nieces and two nephews. His brother, the Reverend Benjamin Bosworth Smith, predeceased him.

Plans for a memorial service at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church will be announced at a later date.

Donations in Fred Smith’s memory have been suggested to East End Hospice.