In a column written after the death of Frank Graham in 1965 and reprinted in To Absent Friends from Red Smith (1982), Red Smith eulogized his friend and fellow sportswriter: "His incredibly accurate ear and implausibly retentive memory (he almost never took notes), his faultless taste ... and the purity of his prose combined to produce--it says here--the finest sports column of all time." What he wrote in generous tribute to Graham is, in fact, an accurate assessment of Smith's own talent. Gifted with a keen ear and a remarkable memory, Smith was able to quote verbatim from interviews without using notes; more important, he was considered not only the best sportswriter but one of the finest prose stylists of his time. Seven years before he wrote his eulogy of Graham, Smith's picture had appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine, which identified him as "the world's most widely read sportswriter...