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Warren Allen Smith

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WARREN ALLEN SMITH

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BIOGRAPHICAL – Official Website wasm@mac.com

Warren Allen Smith, an author whose four books have been written and published since his 80th birthday, was born (27 October 1921) in Minburn, Iowa.

He is listed in 'Who's Who in the World' (1977 to date); 'Who's Who in America' and Contemporary Authors.

His father, Harry Clark Smith (1887-1975), who played for and was a scout for the Chicago Cubs' Portland farm team, after service in France including the Battle of Verdun (the greatest and lengthiest during World War I) was a grain dealer in Minburn and Rippey, Iowa.

His mother, Ruth Marion Miles (1891-1975), was the daughter of a pioneering homesteader, L. D. Miles, who came to the Dakota Territory from Michigan in 1882.

  • Drafted into the U.S. Army (1942-1946), he landed on Omaha Beach near St. Laurent Sur Mer (1944, the largest amphibian landing in history) and became Chief Clerk of the Adjutant General's Office in the Little Red Schoolhouse, Reims, France. In 1948, he received his B.A. (English, music) from the University of Northern Iowa and in 1949 his M.A. (American Literature Since 1870; advisor was Lionel Trilling from Columbia University.
  • He was a teacher for 37 years - a progressive school, Bentley in New York City (1950-1954; New Canaan High School in Connecticut (1954-1986); Teachers College, Columbia University (1961-1962).
  • He was book review editor of The Humanist (1953-1958). Founded Hvmanist Book Clvb, XXVII Millport Ave., New Canaan, CT, using the name Lvcretivs (1957-1962). To join, subscribers had to resign from at least one other book club. Fernando Vargas was the club's Vice President in charge of Relations with the Public. 'Saturday Review' did a write-up about the club's use of parody. In actuality it supplied books for Eastern Oregon University, Harvard, and others.
  • He founded Taursa Fund (1971-1973) – a mutual fund started with two other Mensans, Smith named it by coining a combination of Taurus and Ursa; it floundered after passing requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission and going public, after which its assets were sold.
  • A book reviewer, Library Journal, in the 1960s he reviewed Dick Gregory's Nigger.
  • The studio recorded clients, then supplied acetate 33, 45, or 78 disks, LPs, cassettes, album jackets, mothers, stampers, cartridges. Produced Manuel Salazar: Costa Rica's Forgotten Tenor, 2002), from tapes mastered from 78rpms by Costa Rican partner Vargas. Their clients included Robert Alda, David Amram, Paul Anka, Jerry Bock, Irving Caesar, Sammy Cahn, Paddy Chayevsky, Chubby Checker, Bobby Darin, Bob Fosse, Earl Garner, Marvin Hamlisch, Hildegarde, Jay and the Americans, Thad Jones, Maurice Levine, Meadowlark Lemon, Barry Manilow, Mary Martin, Galt McDermott, Joseito Mateo, Ethel Merman, David Merrick, Arthur Miller, Mills Music, Liza Minnelli, Issachar and Taipora Miron, Odetta, Eddie Palmieri, Joseph Papp, Gilbert Price, Tito Puente, Doc Severinsen, Carly Simon, Paul Simon, Sun Ra and His Arkestra, Tiny Tim, Sarah Vaughan, Gwen Verdon, Eli Wallach, Harold Wheeler, Robert Whitehead, Stefan Wolpe, and others.
  • Vargas and Smith were companions for 40 years, until Vargas's death from Kaposi's sarcoma in 1989.
  • Since meeting Taslima Nasrin in 1996 at a humanist convention in Mexico, he became a special friend, confidante, webmaster, and editor. She has been recipient of the $100,000 UNESCO-Singh Award and was Amnesty France's nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
  • The most dangerous times in his life: as an acting 1st Sergeant, leading his company in 1944 onto Normandy's Omaha Beach; almost getting arrested as a June 1969 rioter at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village; and watching from his apartment windows the 9/11/2001 terrorist crashes into the World Trade Towers a short distance way.
  • The major event in his life: hitchhiking from Iowa to Columbia University in 1948 and, during the very first week, meeting Fernando Vargas, who would remain his companion for 40 years.
  • His original correspondence with E. E. Cummings, John Dewey, Walter Lippmann, Thomas Mann, Bertrand Russell, George Santayana, Albert Schweitzer, John Steinbeck, William Carlos Williams, and others is found in Harvard's Houghton Library.
  • Of the many hats he wears or has worn, his favorite is that of a writer and teacher.

AUTHOR OF BOOKS – http://chelCpress.com

  • 2000 Who's Who in Hell (NY: Barricade Books, 2000) - a handbook and international directory for humanists, freethinkers, naturalists, rationalists, and non-theists; received a front-page review/interview in The New York Observer and a CNN interview by Jeanne Moos
  • 2002 Celebrities in Hell (NY: Barricade Books, 2002) - a listing of contemporary non- revelationists from Woody Allen and Marlon Brando to Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Christopher Reeve, and Frank Zappa

COLUMNIST

  • 1994-1998 "Humanist Potpourri". Free Inquiry"; "Paul Cadmus: Artist-Humanist," August 1996
  • 1970s "Manhattan Scene," in St. Thomas Daily News' and twenty other West Indian newspapers

NEWSLETTERS

  • 1960 - to date Pinhooker - editor, a newsletter for Minburn High School (Iowa) graduates
  • 1967-1993 Taking Stock, editor, newsletter of the Investment Club
  • 1990-1993 Pique, founding editor, newsletter of the Secular Humanist Society of New York
  • 1997-1998 Janestreeter, editor, newsletter for Jane Street residents, Greenwich Village
  • 1990s – to date Emeritus, editor, newsletter of New Canaan Public School retirees

RECIPIENT

  • [Leavey Award], By Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge 1985 - was handed $7,500 by architect [Charles Luckman] as one of fifteen recipients ot the annual Leavey Awards – received for a syllabus to teach Adam Smith clubs and classes in high schools

ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JOURNALS

  • American Rationalist (St. Louis, MO) a bi-monthly journal of the Rationalist Association
  • Beacon (Melbourne, Australia) "Sinclair Lewis Died a Humanist," October 1951
  • Bermuda Recorder ("Manhattan Chessboard" column in the 1970s)
  • Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly (McMaster U, Canada), a quarterly
  • Brooklyn Eagle, 1958 book review written under the name of Allen Windsor
  • Daily News (New York City), largest daily newspaper in New York City
  • Examiner, African-Americans for Humanism (Buffalo, New York)
  • Free Inquiry (Buffalo, New York) "Humanist Heretic: Priscilla Smith Robertson (1910-1989)"
  • The Freethinker (London), Secular Humanist Monthly
  • Freethought Today (Madison, Wisconsin), Freedom From Religion Foundation
  • Gay & Lesbian Humanist (Kenilworth, Warwickshire, United Kingdom), a quarterly by the Pink Triangle Trust 1996
  • Humanist (Yellow Springs, Ohio; Buffalo, NY; Washington, DC) In addition to being the journal's book review editor in the mid-1950s, Smith wrote "Authors and Humanism, A Classification of Humanism, and Statements," #5, 1951, pp. 193-204
  • Humanist in Canada (Ottawa, Canada)
  • Humanist World Digest (Berkeley, California) – "Two Laughing Humanists: Lin Yutang and Carl Jonas." August 1955
  • The Janestreeter (New York City)
  • Lesbian and Gay New York (13 July 2000)
  • New York Times, 9 June 1960 – an explanation of why Adlai Stevenson is favored over Dwight Eisenhower for President.
  • New York Times Book Review, 27 Oct 1957 – favors the thinking of Bertrand Russell and criticizes Reinhold Niebuhr.
  • One (July 1958, "If One Needs Religion," New York and California)
  • [Philosophy Now] - (United Kingdom)
  • The Sinfonian (Phi Mu Alpha Online, Evansville, Indiana), "A Sinfonian's Relationship with Jazz Great Sun Ra."
  • New Humanist (London) - Quarterly Journal of the Rationalist Press Association
  • St. Kitts-Nevis Daily Bulletin, 1 April 1964 – contains front-page haikus written by Smith
  • Skeptical Inquirer (Amherst, New York) - bi-monthly journal of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
  • The Villager (New York City) "Gay in the 1960s – the Time Was Ripe for Revolution," 18 June 2003; "New Book Examines Gay Movement Before Stonewall," a review of Vern L. Bullough's Before Stonewall
  • Waterloo (Iowa) Courier - "Is 'Music Man' A Picture of Iowa Neighbors? New Yorker - Says Play Shows 'Folksey' Touch." 3 Feb 1958

EDITINGS, FOREWORDS, BOOK JACKET BLURBS, PODCASTS

  • André, Irving W. Edward Oliver LeBlanc and the Struggle to Transform Dominica (Roseau, Dominica: Pont Casse Press, 2005) - Foreword of a Canadian judge's biography of the "Father of the Nation" of the West Indian island of Dominica
  • Asimov, Isaac and Janet Asimov (editor), It's Been a Good Life (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 2002) - book jacket blurb - final chapter of the book reveals that Asimov died of AIDS, following a tainted blood transfusion, which was not generally known until the book was published.
  • Nasreen, Taslima, All About Women (New Delhi, Rupa & Co., 64 pages, paperback, 2005). Poetry edited by Smith
  • Nasreen, Taslima, Love Poems of Taslima Nasreen (New Delhi, Rupa & Co., 46 pages, paperback, 2005) - Poetry edited by Smith
  • Nastrin, Taslima, Meyebela: My Bengali Girlhood (Steerforth Press, 2002) - Autobiography edited by Smith
  • Nasrin, Taslima, Phera (2005) - Novel edited by Smith
  • Salazar, Manuel, Manuel Salazar: Costa Rica's Forgotten Tenor (Ticowasm, 2001) - Liner notes for a CD about Melico, Caruso's competitor - includes photos of Smith and Fernando Vargas, who transcribed the music from 78rpm records to LP and then to CD
  • Smith, Warren Allen - podcasts: 'Interviewing William James, a 2005 podcast about Willy, who was first arrested as a 12-year-old in Washington near the White House and whose life in the subculture helps document Allen Windsor's Cruising the Deuce, about Manhattan's notorious 42nd Street [- Interviewing Taslima Nasrin] - a 2005 podcast about the Bangladesh dissident with a fatwa on her head, the "female Salman Rushdie" who prefers to call him "the male Taslima Nasrin." If you do not have iTunes already, download it for free at http://www.itunes.com If asked, subscribe - it's free.

MEMBERSHIP

Act Up Agua Buena Human Rights Assn - Honorary Member, Costa Rica ASCAP [http://www.iheu.org/node/467 Asociacón Iberoamericana Etica Humanista] - Honorary Member, Costa Rica [http://www.lehman.edu/deanhum/philosophy/BRSQ/BRS/ Bertrand Russell Society] - from 1973 to the present; v.p. 1977-1980 British Humanist Association Freethinkers NY [http://wasm.us/www.wasm.us/GNYCBRS.html Greater New York Chapter of the Bertrand Russell Society] Hume Society International Humanist and Ethical Union International Press Institute – member in 1976 Jane Street Authors Jane Street Board of Directors (1995-1999) Mensa New York Society for Ethical Culture Omaha Beach Veterans Association Rationalist Press Association, UK Stonewall Veterans Association Thomas Paine Foundation Unitarian Society – Des Moines, IA; Cedar Falls, IA; Westport, CT; Stamford, CT Voltaire Society

REFERENCES TO

  • Dunham, Barrows. Giant in Chains (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1953) Is critical of Smith's categorizations of different humanisms (pp. 27-31)
  • Ellis, Royston, "Who's Who," in Explore Sri Lanka, May 2003
  • Lamont, Corliss, "The Enduring Impact of George Santayana," NY: Basic Pamphlets, 1964 - Quotes George Santayana's letter to Smith, "My Naturalism is fundamental and includes man, his mind, and all his works, products of the generative order of Nature. Christ in the Gospels is a legendary figure." (p. 12)
  • Lamont, Corliss. The Philosophy of Humanism (NY: Frederick Ungar, 1965). "In a carefully documented study, 'Authors and Humanism,' Warren Allen Smith, a Humanist teacher, quotes Sinclair Lewis as stating: 'Yes, I think that naturalistic Humanism – with dislike for verbalistic philosophy – is my category.' " (p. 76)
  • Leading Men in the United States of America. Providence, R.I., Riverside, 1965
  • Lyons, Leonard. "The Lyons Den," New York Post, 3 March 1954. Refers to Smith's seeing an anachronistic Brooklyn telephone directory in the library of the stage set for T. S. Eliot's Confidential Clerk on Broadway
  • Lyons, Leonard, "The Lyons Den," New York Post, 17 March 1957 - Refers to Smith's noticing from his balcony seat that Tallulah Bankhead actually plays a good chess game during a scene of Eugenia on Broadway.
  • Mariani, Paul, William Carlos Williams (NY: McGraw Hill, 1981) - "Warren Allen Smith, book review editor for The Humanist, had written Williams that same week to ask him if he thought of himself as a humanist. And if he was, was he a theistic humanist or a secular humanist? No use dealing with the question in that way, Williams answered on the twenty-fifth. Atheism , he wrote, was 'laughable as a positive belief.' Death awaited every man, and that seemed to be the end of the matter. And while he knew that there was no use sounding 'positive' about that conclusion, as a doctor he did kow that 'since all data in the case are withheld from me I find myself absolutely unconcerned.' All his life he had lived 'side by side with men who believe in the miracles of Christ,' and though they were his friends, he never thought of discussing his beliefs with them or they with him. . . . I was bred a Unitarian,' he underlined, 'but whether I transect the cone of my preferences nearer or farther from the light has become as I grow older indifferent to me. . . .Being forced back from any knowledge except the report of the senses,' he concluded, 'a humanistic naturalism is all that is left to me lit by the lightnings which play about the minds of saints and sinners.' Thus, having opted rationally for a pragmatic naturalsm, he threw out the possibility that it was the Light after all which he wanted to celebrate. If there were contradictions in what he said, he'd nevertheless said what he had to say; let someone else unscramble it." (p. 723)
  • Mensa Register (London: Mensa) 1964-5 A first listing. He has remained a member.
  • Morain, Lloyd and Mary Morain. Humanism as the Next Step, An Introduction for Liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. (Boston, Beacon Press, 1954) - Cites Smith as one of the "energetic humanists."
  • New Canaan Advertiser, "Fire Destroyed Only His Studio, 'Dead Man' Says" 11 July 1968 – Fire losses in excess of $100,000 to his two New York City business were sustained by the "deceased" Warren Allen Smith, chairman of the English department at New Canaan High School. Recently, an erroneous news report was broadcast by a Manhattan radio station that Mr. Smith, a resident of 94 Millport Avenue, had perished in a three-alarm fire at his New York recording studio, Later accounts of the fire omitted mention of Mr. Smith's "demise," but no correction was made. "Reports of my demise are highly exaggerated," said Mr. Smith after receiving calls to see whether he was in fact alive. . . .The fire began in the Arena Theatre in West 46th Street and raged for seven hours, forcing many in the nearby Hotel Edison to be routed from their rooms. Fire officials believe the fire was started by arsonists. Within a few days after the fire, Mr. Smith had re-formed the studios and had relocated at 130 West 42nd Street."
  • Santayana, George. Letters of George Santayana. Edited by Daniel Cory. (NY: Scribner's, 1955) - Includes the poet-philosopher's 9 Feb 1951 letter to Smith about naturalism.
  • Standard and Poor's Register of Corporations, Directors and Executive, U.S. and Canada, 1965. (NY: Standard & Poor's Corp, 1965) - A first listing, including Smith's being Chairman and President of Variety Sound Corporation and Vice President with Fernando Vargas of Borodva, a Westinghouse laundry near Columbia University
  • Time, Vol. 85, #5, 29 January 1965 - Quotes Smith on sex and dducation: "If Booth Tarkington were to write Seventeen today, he'd have to call it Twelve."
  • Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges," 1945-1948 - A first listing

TALKS BY "Are You in Hell?" New York City - Atheist Chapter is told about having interviewed atheist Charles Smith in the early 1950s. 19 January 2003

"Celebrities in Hell," a discussion by the author. [New York Society for Ethical Culture, 4 September 2002.

"Humanist VIP's: Their Impact Upon the Present and Probable Impact Upon the Future." New York City, Community (Unitarian) Church, 2 June 1957 - suggested that naturalistic humanism today is somewhat analogous to 19th century transcendentalism, except it relies entirely upon the scientific method of reasoning.

"The Role of the Little Magazine in Shaping Public Opinion." Ann Arbor, Michigan, University of Michigan. 6 December late 1950s - He was invited by Nobel Prize Winner in genetics, Dr. Hermann J. Muller and spoke as the Book Review Editor of The Humanist about the role of little magazines.

"Waukee's Old Hotel" - during a September 2005 fall festival, Smith spoke about the hotel in this Des Moines, Iowa, suburb that his Grandfather Spencer Smith built and where his father Harry Clark Smith was born; the building is the oldest still-standing structure in the town.

Numerous lectures to humanist and non-theist groups in California, Connecticut, Costa Rica, Florida, New Jersey, New York, and elsewhere. In addition, he was interviewed on National Public Radio (NPR), CNN, and numerous local and nationwide radio and television programs. . . .

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