Richard Kyle Smith is a retired Alabama CPA who was born and raised in Milton, Florida, and graduated from Samford University. After many years in public accounting, he served as finance director of the city of Hoover, Alabama (population 85,000), for sixteen years, where he received many awards for his financial reporting before retiring in 2001. Always a lover of words and local history, he puts these together in Blackwater. He is an avid reader and writer. His great-great-great-grandfather Benjamin Jernigan built the water-powered sawmill that initiated Jernigan's Landing, which became Mill Town and finally Milton.