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I'm dedicating this column to my friend Michael Goldsmith, a BYU law professor who died Sunday at the age of 58 of Lou Gehrig's disease.
While in the debilitating throes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Goldsmith almost single-handedly brought new national awareness to the disease when he wrote an essay in Newsweek that prompted Major League Baseball last summer to designate July 4 Lou Gehrig Day at ballparks around the country.
The passion Goldsmith had for the cause led 15 major league home teams to recognize the Yankees star on the 70th anniversary of his famous "I'm the luckiest man on the face of the earth" speech at Yankee Stadium, and raise money for ALS research in the process.
His effort, even while the nerve cells in his brain continued to rapidly deteriorate, was typical of the former New Yorker and organized-crime fighter transplanted to the more pastoral climate of BYU in Provo.
Who he was and how he thrived at the J. Reuben Clark School of Law at BYU had a dramatic impact on me, the hopeless Ute fan with a life-long and freely admitted bias against the rival school south of the Point of the Mountain.
I met Goldsmith in the mid-1980s when he was a member of the Governor's Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice and chaired that commission's Grand Jury Task Force.
He stood out on that commission,
His lengthy blond locks and brash yet disarming style, not to mention his colorful use of noun and verb modifiers, a la Manhattan slang, seemed to make him a bad fit at BYU. But fit in he did and near the end of his life he would come to tears while describing the wonderful way he was treated by administration, faculty and students alike at the Mormon campus in Provo.
He was voted "Best Professor of the Year" six times by the student body. When I wrote about his fortitude despite his deteriorating condition and slurred speech, I received several e-mails from students wanting me to understand that, despite the speech problems, he was still one of the most demanding and accomplished -- and beloved -- professors in the school.
When Goldsmith was diagnosed with ALS three years ago, he hid it from the administration and students. But he made his condition public for fear his students would think he was coming to class drunk.
BYU responded by equipping him with a microphone and other aids to help him with his delivery. "They were completely supportive," he told me.
He came to Provo after working as a prosecutor in New York and serving on an organized-crime task force that helped bring down John Gotti.
He was quick to blast the Legislature in his adopted state for failing to provide funding and legislation he felt would help the war on drugs. And despite several public disagreements with Sen. Orrin Hatch, the state's senior senator was instrumental in getting him appointed to the federal Sentencing Guidelines Commission, a gesture Goldsmith told me he appreciated immensely.
When he first learned of his disease, he became a tireless crusader for Congress to override President Bush's veto of federal funding for stem cell research. His tactic was to identify the Mormons in the Senate and the House. He felt he could reach those lawmakers more readily because of the many LDS friends he had made on the BYU campus.
He held meetings with former Mormon missionaries and others influential in the faith and got them to sign petitions and send letters to the Mormon lawmakers supporting the override. Goldsmith didn't share their LDS faith, but he developed great respect for those who practiced it, he told me.
I'm a better person because I knew Michael Goldsmith. And I have a respect for BYU, hard to admit, that I never would have had I not known him. I saw the way the school accepted this liberal easterner who was different, but whose great talent was recognized as a valuable contribution to the law school.
Paul Rolly is a political columnist. Reach him at prolly@sltrib.com
