In October 2015, I traveled to Kremmling, Colorado, the last of my site visits researching Smith. Kremmling is the tiny Rocky Mountain town that had been the home of Dr. Ernest Ceriani, the subject of Smith’s legendary “Country Doctor” essay for Life in 1948.
For years, I’ve noted that the words doctor and documentary come from the same Latin root, docere, or doceo, which means, variously, to care, to pay attention, to teach, to learn, to heal, to make appear right. Walking in Smith’s and Dr. Ceriani’s footsteps in Kremmling seemed like an appropriate way to complete this book.
I flew into Denver, rented a car, and drove two and a half hours northwest to Kremmling, crossing the Continental Divide on State Road 40 at altitudes over ten thousand feet, one of the most treacherous passes in the country, I learned later, and one of the most beautiful.
There were people in Kremmling who remembered Dr. Ceriani and Smith, including the sister of the little girl famously stitched up after a horse-riding accident. I drove around, sought Smith’s original vantage points, researched local-history archives, stayed in the same hotel where he stayed, and watched the World Series at the only bar in town.
I drove back to Denver to fly home. While there, I met Dr. Ceriani’s son, Gary, now a successful attorney nearing age seventy (he was two when Smith photographed his father). I sat around the table with Gary and his wife, Mary Ann, with my audio recorder running for more than ninety minutes. They brought out some memorabilia, including several vintage prints that Smith gave to Dr. Ceriani. What I had learned in Kremmling is that Dr. Ceriani demonstrated undying devotion to his work over several decades as the only doctor in this remote region. He made house calls at all hours and he was almost never off. I quizzed Gary on his father’s drive. Gary’s thoughtful responses had to do with qualities his father inherited or learned from his parents, who were emigrants from Italy that found their way to pioneer life in North Dakota, rather than settling in cities like most Italians.
Then, when we were done, I turned off my recorder, packed my bag, and was preparing to leave when Gary made the most interesting and telling comment I heard in five days following Smith’s footsteps in Colorado: “You know, I’ve never thought of this until now, but I believe there’s a chance that my father felt trapped by Smith’s work. Smith made him out to be a perfect human being in Life magazine. Then he had to live up to it.”