Remembering Elbert B. Smith

by Senator Tom Harkin

E.B. Smith in the 1960s.Madam President, with the recent death of Dr. Elbert B. Smith -- known to his friends simply as "E.B."-- I lost a much beloved mentor, advisor, and friend.Obituaries in the Washington Post and elsewhere have captured the essential facts of his life. Since 1990, he was professor emeritus at the University of Maryland. He served in the Navy in World War II, earned his master's degree and PhD at the University of Chicago, and taught at Iowa State University, among other colleges, before joining the faculty at Maryland in 1968. Over the years, he also served as a Fulbright professor at the University of Tokyo and at Moscow State University, and elsewhere. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in Iowa in 1962 and again in 1966.What those factual obituaries fail to capture is the spirit of this remarkable man -- his personal warmth, his talent for friendship, his great love of history and scholarship, and his passion for progressive causes.

E.B. Smith, U-Md. history professor, dies at 93

E.B. Smith, a retired University of Maryland history professor, died of congestive heart failure at the Hospice of the Chesapeake in Harwood on April 30, the day before his 93rd birthday. He lived at Tracys Landing on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay.A daughter-in-law, Barbara Smith, confirmed his death.Dr. Smith joined the faculty at Maryland in 1968 and became a professor emeritus in 1990. He specialized in the Civil War and had written about the pre-Civil War presidencies of Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore and William Buchanan and about the Civil War-era politician Francis Preston Blair, a founder of Silver Spring....