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| MELISSA VERSEY / Scroll |
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| President and Sister Clark attend Shanghai Nights. President Clark shared his thoughts on relationships with China and the Church’s present and future role there. |
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Tom Smart came to BYU-Idaho Nov. 2 as a photojournalist for the Deseret News to take pictures for a story one of his fellow staffers, Carrie Moore, was writing about the school.
The names of Elizabeth Smart, Ed Smart, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee might ring more bells than Tom Smart, but he was involved in the same kidnapping of his niece Elizabeth, and was mostly known as the family spokesperson.
Smart came to BYU-Idaho on a journalistic errand, but he ended up being involved in more than a photo shoot.
Lane Williams, communications professor, invited Smart to his introduction to journalism class, and Smart began speaking on his new book In Plain Sight.
“He moved our students on the power of the press for good and ill,” Williams said. “It was an emotional retelling of his side of the Smart story.”
The story is about of finding his niece, and that being the most important thing. He wrote In Plain Sight a long time after Elizabeth was safe at home.
“This book I had to write as a journalist,” Smart said. “There’s no one I’d rather see read this than a journalist.”
He wants journalists to read it, even though he says he “hates trying to sell the book.”
All of the proceeds go to the Rape Recovery Center and Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and his book is being sent to journalism professors around the country.
“Frankly, the book’s come and gone for me and I’m happy to be a photographer,” Smart said. “I love being a journalist and I’m happy to do that.”
The Deseret News has been his career home since 1981, and he’s been doing photojournalism ever since. This is because not only does he get to take pictures, but he can write stories on what he’s really passionate about.
“It’s nice to be picky what I write about,” Smart said.
Smart commented on what it was like to be the spokesperson on the other side of the media during the time Elizabeth was missing, when it was he who had been the journalist countless times before.
“It was a completely different side … it was surreal,” said Smart. “I had photographed situations like that before, hiding the tears behind my camera.”
