Smiley Anders loved limericks. Here are some of our favorites readers sent in to remember him.

Smiley Anders tells a story to members of the Prancing Babycakes at his Spanish Town home on Thursday, January 4, 2024. When The Advocate decided to host a limerick competition in memory of longtime columnist Smiley Anders — who died in May after more than 50 years of writing for the paper — we knew readers would be interested. We did not, however, anticipate the hundreds of entries we received.

Reading these limericks has confirmed several truths. First, "Smiley" rhymes with "wily." This was, by far, the most oft-used rhyme in the submissions.

Here is an example of that rhyme done well by Smiley's longtime so-called "dance mistress," Molly Buchmann in Baton Rouge. Readers appreciated the magic that Smiley managed to weave into the plethora of submitted content he used to create his six-day-a-week column, as Betty Diamond Alessandra of New Orleans pointed out in this limerick: Third, readers appreciated the break that Smiley brought from the gloom-and-doom news, as presented by H.W.

Van Horn III of Baton Rouge: Smiley has staying power, and readers miss him as much as we do at the newspaper. Smiley remained sharp, funny and informed until the week he passed away in May. Fans cared about Smiley and his wife, Lady Katherine, as evidenced by this offering all the way from Norm Kowitz in North Carolina.

Smiley was about ribald and clever wordplay. Jim Macika of New Orleans does both in this five-line piece of wonderment, which was inspired by his wife giving birth to triplet .