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 daughters back in 1992: Phil Cangelosi of Baton Rouge also noted Smiley's penchant for fun and alacrity: Readers cherish the details of the decades of columns Smiley penned. They love to talk about his vacations in Back Brusly with Large Marge.
Here is an ode to how Smiley spent his well-deserved vacations in limerick form by John Engelsman, of Baton Rouge: Speaking of Louisiana, several poets in the making incorporated lore of the Bayou State into their Smiley tributes, including Roger Clark of Covington: Readers continue to appreciate the kindness with which Smiley composed his columns. A little ditty from Gerry Gilbert of Diamondhead, Mississippi, sums that sentiment up nicely: We learned new things about Smiley — like he once participated in a log rolling competition. Cliff Barton writes that Jim Menard, the weatherman at that time from Channel 2, beat Smiley.
Here's Barton's limerick to go along with what sounds like a rough ride: Readers also demonstrated that they had an appreciation for the kind of humor Smiley loved. Louis Diamond didn't write his limerick about Smiley, but those of us who knew Smiley well believe he would have loved this one. This submission by Dennis O’Leary in Mandeville demonstrated the kind of rule-breaking Smiley was prone to appreciate: Karen Poirrier of Lutcher was a longtime Smiley fan who took the time to write many limericks for the contest.
This one captures Smiley's signature look and style: Judy Kaufman of Baton Rouge and numerous other readers wrote limericks that mentioned Smiley's Mississippi roots: Several limerick writers focused on Smiley's love of Baton Rouge, his adopted home where he lived for more than seven decades. Karen Corkern Babb of Baton Rouge noted in her limerick: Many limerick writers in the contest could not resist the rhyme between Smiley Anders and another well-known newspaper columnist. Teddy McGehee of Baton Rouge used that rhyme to his advantage with this one: We received so many great limericks that picking a winner was a hard task.
The second-place limerick for the 2024 Smiley Anders Limerick contest was written by Kathleen Mullen: And, finally, the winning limerick was written by David Sabrio of Metairie:.
