TIMES RECORD • February 25, 2021
George Smith was best known as executive director of the Sportsman Alliance of Maine, which he led for two decades. His achievements as a State House lobbyist for SAM were legendary, and it was a rare session he didn’t have two dozen bills in varying stages of development. Yet it was in his second career, as a professional writer, that I came to know George as a colleague, and a friend. We could not, in many respects, have been more different, but over time our writing interests, and even our views, began to converge. Our last meeting was for a magazine profile. I wondered whether dying instantly might be better than the terrible wasting of ALS. Not at all, he replied. This way, he would be able to say goodbye to everything he loved, and to all those who loved him. And he did. It was a fitting end to a life well-lived. ~ Douglas Rooks