Thursday, December 6, 2018

"Fast Eddie:" A world of trouble ... a sad ending

     He was one of those kids we knew in the late 1950s -- a rough-edged, tough young guy. And then, where did he go?
     It is a sad story, a horrible one, really. Ended tragically. Two weeks ago, we got a reminder.
     Someone contacted me looking for information on this man, provided some background (not all of it correct), sent a photo, and asked, "Is this 'Fast' Eddie Smith?"
     Instant recognition. Yes. Yes, it is/was Eddie Smith.
     The photo -- from a Woodlawn High School yearbook -- was the kid we remembered ... from our neighborhood and our schools (Sunset Acres Elementary, Oak Terrace Junior High and Woodlawn). 
     We had been on the same kids' baseball team one year, I was certain of that. Read on, you'll see why I remember.
     The information sent said he was a 1965 graduate of Woodlawn, but, no, actually he was in the Class of '66. So a year behind us in school -- for eight years. 
     What was correct was this: In 1983, a man named Willie Eddie Smith was murdered in Shreveport.
     Intriguing. And, of course, I thought: This might make for an interesting blog. Time to do some research.
     Did not remember this happening, although it must have been in the papers. To find out, to be reminded 35 years later, was a bit of a shock.  
     We were in Shreveport in 1983, working as part of a terrific, talented, fun-loving sports department at the Journal. The big story in sports for us that year was second-year pro Hal Sutton's emergence as the top money winner on the PGA Tour and the PGA Championship wire-to-wire winner that August. 
     By then, Eddie Smith -- from Sunset Acres -- had been dead for 2 1/2 months. 
     Shot to death May 23 in an argument related to a card game (poker).   
     The "Fast Eddie" nickname, referenced in a newspaper story a week after Willie Edward Smith's obituary in The Shreveport Times, was a hint to the fast, wild, sordid life of the victim.
     Just how wild we learned by tracking down two people: (1) a Smith family member -- Eddie's nephew, a son of his oldest brother -- and (2) one of our school buddies.
     "Eddie stayed in trouble," said the nephew, R. Lewis  Smith. "Some people just find trouble wherever they go, and that was Eddie. And the trouble got worse and worse through his life."
     Until he met a fast death.
---
     Details of the end (taken from stories in The Times): Shot three times, in the head and the abdomen, and also beaten in the face.
     He had been the lone white man in a group of five at 2911 Portland, Apartment A, located in the Queensborough area (close to the State Fairgrounds).
      Much like Sunset Acres, Queensborough had been a comfortable, working-class, almost all-white residential neighborhood, but by 1983, it had become more mixed-race, lower-income, and the streets were meaner.
     The shooting, said the July 6 story which reported that the triggerman -- Jack King, then 34 -- had pleaded guilty, followed an argument over (what else?) money.
     King was allowed to take a lesser plea of manslaughter -- rather than second-degree murder -- in agreement to a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison.
     After the Shreveport police investigation, King was arrested within two days after the shooting. 
     That day and over the next week, four people -- three men (one King's roommate) and one 20-year-old woman -- also were arrested and charged as accessories after the fact, meaning they witnessed the act, then helped clean blood from the apartment and dispose of the body. (Two of the "accessories" lived in the apartment.)
      Early the next morning after the shooting, Eddie's body was found in the rear seat of his compact foreign car [a red Plymouth Barracuda] on Hardy Street (some nine blocks from the Portland apartment).
       At the time of the murder, King also had been charged with armed robbery and aggravated burglary in another case. But that was dismissed in September 1983.
       The four "accessories" cases ultimately were dismissed, one by that July, the others late the next year.
       Guess the murder sentence was enough for the courts, and that with King in prison, the "accessories" were given leniency.
      No leniency for Eddie. But while his death "was a hard time for all of us," said nephew Lewis Smith, "it wasn't surprising.
     "He always ran with the wrong crowd. It was a downward spiral that Eddie went through for years and years."
 ---      
     In the stories in The Times, Eddie is listed as living in Keithville -- just south of Shreveport. But his obituary said he lived in Shreveport and his nephew said he resided at the  home that had been the family's for years -- 2867 Hollywood, the northeast part of Sunset Acres (the "other" side of the canal from us, about 11 blocks from our house, 10 blocks from the elementary school).
     That is where we remember him from the late 1950s.
     Willie Edward was born late in 1947, the "baby" of his family -- with a much older father (Robert Calhoun "Shorty" Smith) and mother Margaret Gould Smith, and two brothers who were almost a generation older -- Robert by 17 years, Jerry by 14. 
     The family dynamics were problematic.
     "He never got along with his father, my grandfather," said  Lewis Smith. 
     There was little connection with the brothers, who had long moved away from home by Eddie's teenage years.
     The tie with the mother was stronger, for many years. But the relationship soured as trouble mounted, and finally fell  apart.  
     Dennis Storey was a Sunset Acres friend, in the same grade as Eddie throughout school days, also a Woodlawn '66 graduate. He was a frequent visitor to the Smith home, and felt that Eddie "was an 'accident' child.
     "He was a spoiled kid," Storey remembered. "The way he talked to his Dad ... If I had talked to my Dad that way, he'd have whooped my ass." 
     "Shorty" Smith was a painter, and Eddie worked with his father some in those years. "I thought he would end up as a painter, too," said Storey. Did not happen; the obituary listed him as a plumber.
---
     Our brief tie with Eddie Smith was on a St. James Episcopal Church-sponsored midget league baseball team (ages 10-12) in either the summer of 1959 or 1960. He was a compact-built kid, a catcher, one of the better players on a team with little talent and few victories. 
     But here is the distinct memory ...
     Late in the season, on a game-ending play, an opposing runner crashed into Eddie at home plate and flattened him. He was hurt.
      In fact, he was hurt badly enough that the coach and concerned parents took him to a hospital. Internal injuries caused swelling and shock, and the vivid memory is that Eddie's body overnight had to be packed in ice.
     That incident perhaps was a sign of woes to come.
     He recovered, but he did not play again that summer. Don't recall him playing baseball again.
     But Storey said he remembered Eddie playing running back for our junior-high team: "He was a helluva football player ... he'd just as soon run over you as look at you." Another friend recalled Eddie running track one junior-high year. (I don't recall him in either sport, but I don't doubt it.)
     By high school, he was a different guy. He had the look, frankly, of a hood, a thug. The hair was slicked back, not a total ducktail -- so hood-looking in those days of the crewcut or flattop that our faculty much preferred -- but close.
     A memory from school: Eddie swaggered his way around.
     "His demeanor was that he wanted to be the tough guy," said Storey. "I did not run around with him by then. I thought he would eventually run into trouble. 
     "He was hanging around the wrong people, riding motorcycles. And I think he got in a gang."
    Storey, retired after 32 years of working in traffic engineering for the City of Shreveport and now living in Blanchard, recalled a chance meeting many years later at a convenience-store stop in Bossier City. In the parking lot, he noticed a familiar -- but changed -- figure.
     "He looked like a gang member," he said of Eddie. "Black leather jacket, the motorcycle ('choppers' they called them), beard, mustache, he was -- as they called it -- 'flying the colors' for the gang.
      "I talked to him, but I knew I didn't want to stay around long. It was obvious he was gang-related and dope-related."
     Mike Flores (Woodlawn Class of '65) was another neighborhood resident who lived closeby and said, "I remember Eddie Smith's name better than I remember Eddie the person. As I recall, he was on the periphery of all my groups."
     Flores said it had been decades and he had no knowledge of Eddie after high school.
     "My memory is that he ran with a rougher crowd," Mike said. "Maybe his associates caught up with him in the end."
     For sure, Eddie Smith was a black-cloud person, accidents waiting to happen. 
---
     Lewis Smith, 63, a Shreveport resident who is a certified public accountant and registered financial advisor, said that writing about Eddie now would not be a problem for the family. "We all know the story," he said.
     The trail of trouble was long, and Lewis offered some details. So did our check with the Caddo Parish Clerk of Courts office.
     • An altercation with the Shreveport police in which he was a holdout inside a house, then was shot and had a severe stomach wound.              
     • A conviction for possession/distribution of methamphetamines Dec. 7, 1972, and a sentence of two years hard labor at the federal prison in Oakdale, La.
     • A couple of motorcycle wrecks. On one, he hit a median curve going 70-80 miles an hour ("he was totally reckless," said Lewis), causing a shattered jawbone and a total reconstruction of his jaw. Lewis: "He kind of mumbled after that." 
      • A conviction for receiving stolen goods, Jan. 10, 1983, a guilty plea, a fine of $500 and costs or 50 days in the Caddo Parish jail.
       A little more than four months later, the end.
       Lewis, who had been a funeral director for Rose-Neath before becoming a CPA, knew some of the people who made the arrangements for Eddie's service and burial (Lewis was one of the pallbearers).
     For the final decade of his life, family members occasionally would see Eddie. Lewis said his younger brother Charles Wayne also was a plumber and at times crossed paths with Eddie at work.
     ."He [Eddie] was always on the fringe of the family," Lewis said. "He might show up for holidays, but he was not really part of it."
     And even the mother, who had tried to maintain a relationship, gave up.
     "She settled up with Eddie several years before [his death," Lewis said, "and did not have much to do with him. She was tired of financially bailing him out and supporting him."
      The death "was hard to Memaw to accept, it was a grueling time for her. But it also put her at peace. It put a lot of things to rest."
---
      There is no redeeming message in Eddie Smith's story. It is an example that even in an idyllic neighborhood and schools of our youth not everything turned out well in our Camelot. 
       It is, though, a heartbreaking story -- one of several from our area.
       "It wasn't that Eddie did not have good examples in his household," Lewis Smith said, recalling his grandparents' efforts. "Memaw could not understand what happened to him.
       "He could not change, or he didn't want to. Other people go through rehab, and some make changes. Some don't. He didn't even try."

             

25 comments:

  1. From Kirby Ramsey: I remember Eddie well at Oak Terrace. He ran track and was fantastic. He was on one of the relay teams. The OT runner who was to hand the baton to Eddie in one 440 relay race dropped the baton. The other runners were at least 20 yards ahead by the time Eddie got the baton. He turned on the after-burners and actually passed all the other runners. We all knew he smoked, but it did not to slow him down. I do not remember seeing him at Woodlawn. Such a sad story.

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  2. From Jim Pruett: Frank Neel, a terrific athlete and the baddest dude at Fair Park, came to mind. Sad.

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  3. From Larry Powell: This was probably as touching a story about a lost life as I have ever read. It summons up an "almost innocent" era gone by and reminds us that we've all asked a "whatever happened to" question about someone who was once a part of our lives.
    The tragedy of the story is that "Fast Eddie" apparently "volunteered" to be a lost life -- not just one night in a card game, but day after day.
    You've written quite a "thinker" for readers. ... There must be someone whose life was positively touched by Fast Eddie Smith.
    Maybe I'm just sappy today from watching all the touching George H.W. Bush eulogies, but I think I'm going to rush into my 47-year-old baby boys' offices and hug them. You know, if I can get past security.

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  4. From Dianne Webb Hamm: This is really sad; I recognize his picture. I grew up in Sunset Acres as well -- class of ‘65. Thanks for the article.

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  5. From Carl Smith: Ran with Eddie a while in late 1960s, maybe early 1970s. We were both in plumbing. I'll just say "I couldn't keep up, thank goodness."

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  6. From Durwood Lee: Eddie was a likeable guy. Knew him through the neighborhood and school. Let him borrow my car one night and I rode his Honda all over town; my first motorcycle experience ... luckily uneventful. I suspect the "Fast Eddie" nickname might be equally related to his running speed. A bunch of us guys used to play weekend (full contact) football at Oak Terrace. If he had the ball, you were not going to catch him.

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  7. From Teddy Allen: Geewhiz, that's a really good/bad story. Way to effort ...

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  8. From Paul Morgan: I recall Eddie; he was much like the article read. However, he was a friend and I always had a good relationship with him. I lost touch after high school and never knew about him being killed. Sad.

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  9. From Rachael Leventhal-Garnett: Such a sad story. It has me wondering if he had untreated concussions that might have contributed to his reckless behavior.

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  10. From Roger Walker: I remember him from the football team at OT. I wondered why he didn’t play at Woodlawn.

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  11. From Ronnie Bridges: What an excellent way you took us through time with the facts of Eddie's life. And I do remember seeing this guy at WHS. Thank you for writing and sharing this story with us.

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  12. From Rodney L. Chandler: The names you mentioned from Sunset Acres were very familiar. I think the Storey family lived on Canal near Waggoner, a couple of blocks off Hollywood. Once again, great story.

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  13. From Wally Hood: Thank you. That was how Eddie lived. That was just Eddie. I had forgotten he played on our baseball team. Thank you again for keeping us informed on some of the many stories from our past.

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  14. From Alan Couvillion: Why talk so ill of the man? It sounded like no one gave him too much of a chance.

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  15. From Janeece Jackson Free: Wow. I wonder if the injury he had while playing ball did more damage than they realized. Heartbreaking story.

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  16. From Jerry Sumrall: Problem is, there are a lot more Fast Eddies out there now in a lot more neighborhoods.

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  17. From Gail Ross: The pastor that married me five days before his funeral is the same pastor that preached his funeral.

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  18. From Billy Henson: Eddie Smith’s face looks so familiar, but can’t say I knew him. Thank you for sharing your knowledge of the kids from our neighborhood. I for one really enjoyed this information on another kid growing up down the block. Our recent conversations about teammates from Sunset Acres really caught me up on people I had always wondered about. Hopefully you will get a chance to write about more of them. Thanks again.

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  19. From Kay Riser Prince: It is very sad to see one -- especially a young one -- make bad choices that led to this sad and tragic end.

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  20. From Al Miller: Good article about a kid who, for whatever reason, just went to the wild side of life. Had a number of them in El Dorado where I grew up just like this. Saw a lot of others in coaching down through the years. Sad, as many of them, like Eddie, had talent and could've used that talent to better themselves.

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  21. From June Ogburn Morgan: Thanks for all the info. Such a sad story ... a part of history connected to our younger years. For some reason it makes me think of the movie “Sand Lot.”

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  22. From Jimmie Jeter: I remember the murder of Eddie because I was still working as a Detective at SPD. Do not remember him, but think I remember the name from when I worked the Motorcycle gangs. I do remember Storey from the traffic engineering department.
    What a memory you have to remember all our Sunset Acres group. Still enjoy reading your articles, please keep them coming.

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  23. From Ron Hill: Thanks for the story. I did not know Eddie during my Woodlawn years. Every life leaves a message for those left behind and it is saddening when a young man like Eddie made the wrong choices. If it weren't for the mercies of the Living God, I'd be in that same boat.

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  24. From Jason Brown: Interesting story about Fast Eddie. I guess every class has its share of fringe/tragic figures. A guy in mine (well, he should have been, but he had to go to HS in a different town) got out of prison recently after doing 20-plus for murder. Another did time for arson. A friend who was a year or two ahead of me drank himself to death before he was 35. Another gal in my class with whom I was friendly, and who also went to New Mexico State University, committed suicide a few months ago.

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  25. I attended Woodlawn with Eddie and in our senior year shared the same home room taught by retired Marine Corps aviator Mr. Floyd Earnest. While Eddie and I weren't what you would call close friends he and I never had any issues and he seemed to always be pleasant to be around. As the years went by after graduation and my stint in the Army I landed a job with a large corporation and was transferred out of Shreveport. A few years later I was working for my employer's marketing group and was assigned the entire 318 area code as my territory. I flew into Shreveport one morning and procured a Shreveport Times. Inside was Eddie's death article. I noted the funeral home handling the services and during the viewing period I did go and pay my respects. I hated to read about his death. Clarence E Trant

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