Former Times editor, Kenya ambassador dies

Smith Hempstone, former editor in chief of The Washington Times and one-time ambassador to Kenya, died Sunday from diabetes. He was 77.

A Washington native and career journalist, Mr. Hempstone was, by his own description, a “rogue” diplomat whose calling to the writing life and Africa itself received a hearty nudge from Ernest Hemingway. As a young reporter on his honeymoon in 1954, Mr. Hempstone dropped by the legendary writer’s hotel suite uninvited and received pivotal advice.

“Been to Africa?” Hemingway demanded. “You ought to go. Africa’s man’s country: fish, hunt, write. The best.”

By then, Mr. Hempstone was already knee-deep in hard news, having logged time as a rewrite man for the Associated Press, a reporter at the Louisville Times and a National Geographic correspondent. For the next decade, the former U.S. Marine wrote for the Washington Star, then became a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, covering Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Mr. Hempstone returned to the Star in the mid-1960s, this time as an editor. Upon the paper’s demise, he became executive editor of The Washington Times in 1982, and editor in chief two years later. Mr. Hempstone was also a syndicated columnist from 1979 to 89 and wrote a number of books, articles and two novels as the years passed.

“I remember him as a fine journalist and reporter, a good writer, good columnist and editor. Smith went on to become the most vigorous diplomat that the State Department ever had or ever wanted — and more. He was a colorful character, and I shall miss him,” said Brit Hume of Fox News.

“As Washington editor of Reader’s Digest, I got to know him very well. He was one of the great journalists I have worked with regularly over 40 years, providing some of the most insightful foreign correspondence that we published. He was a tremendous reporter with great analytic powers. But he was also great fun to work with,” recalled William Schulz.

The first President Bush appointed Mr. Hempstone ambassador to Kenya in 1989, just days after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Over four tumultuous years, the journalist-turned-diplomat admonished President Daniel arap Moi, once advising the East African nation that American economic aid went to those who “nourish democratic institutions, defend human rights and practice multiparty politics.”

He practiced “muscular diplomacy,” according to one account by Laurence Eagleberger, deputy secretary of state at the time. Mr. Moi himself denounced Mr. Hempstone as a “bulldozer,” and more than one death threat surfaced. Undaunted, Mr. Hempstone penned “Rogue Ambassador: An African Memoir,” a personal account published in 1997.

Mr. Hempstone graduated from the University of the South in 1950. He won foreign correspondent awards from Sigma Delta Chi and the Overseas Press Club, and was a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs. Mr. Hempstone was a Bethesda resident at the time of his death.

He is survived by Kathaleen Fishback Hempstone, his wife of 52 years; a daughter, Katherine Hempstone of Baltimore; and a grandson. Funeral arrangements are pending.